Can NLE Software be used while on an external drive?
 

Is it possible for NLE software such as Premiere to be loaded to and used from an external drive instead of in the standard programs folder or internal OS drive? Is this true for any other software as well.

Sure, you could do this, but I would imagine programs installed this way would start up slower from a USB/Firewire drive. Also, depending on the program don't always expect to be able to load them on a different computer than the one they were installed from, due to missing registry entries and files installed in the "Common Files" folder (inside the Program Files folder), which would not be installed on the external drive. You can change the location of the Common Files folder in the registry, but I don't recommend it. The location of the Program Files folder can also be changed in the registry; I've changed it on a couple of computers as I install programs in a partition separate from Windows.

James, your biggest problem will be with other drives. When the software installs, it records where it is. If you plug in a USB jump drive, the drive letters may chance and you will get errors on start and during use as it opens subfunctions such as CG as the drive letters move around.

And as Christopher points out, if the goal is to run it on multiple systems, it must be installed on each so that the initialization is correct. If your software allows single use (as opposed to single install), it is probably better to install it on both systems and use the external as the video source.

Thanks for the info guys. My intent was not to share the software with different PCs but to see if that would possibly solve my import issue with dropping frames because the external drive is 7200K instead of the internal 5400K. Both of you pointing out the registry and shared files says it all, not a good idea. I think it's my RAM that may be causing the problem and it will be upgraded by the end of this week. We'll see.