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Thread: Move Spybot to ext. harddrive?

  1. #1
    Junior Member
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    Default Move Spybot to ext. harddrive?

    I have been using Spybot S&D for a few years now and am very pleased with it. I am certainly not the most qualified in the ways of PC operation, but I have run into a problem lately. I am running out of hard drive space. I have gotten an external hard drive and put almost everything I can think of on it that I don't need on a regular basis, but still I can't even get enough hard drive space to defragment.
    It appears I have something like 776k worth of spyware signatures that Spybot takes about 20 minutes to scan and everything works fine.
    Now the question ( finally! ). Can I move Spybot S&D along with all its spyware search criteria and accessories to the external harddrive and still be able to retrieve it and have it function as effectively as I am used too? Will this make much of a dent in my lack of harddrive space issues?

  2. #2
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    Come on.... somebody out there could at least tell me if this would work or if I don't have a clue as to what I am doing. Don't worry, I keep my feeling locked away in another room. So don't worry about hurting it.

  3. #3
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    Hi dsunday,

    What you are trying to do might work. If you put the whole Spybot folder into a flash drive, say, you might be able to click directly on the program .exe file and run Spybot from there. Try it and see what happens. (Note that the icon on your desktop would still be linked to the copy of Spybot that's on your main hard drive, but there's a way to change that too.)

    Uninstalling Spybot from your hard drive (after copying it to the new drive) should free up about 66 MB of space, if the info shown for the Spybot folder on my own computer is any indication.

    Before starting a scan off the new drive, you might also need to go into the Directories under Settings in Advanced Mode and specify where you want Spybot to scan (i.e., the C: drive).

    It's getting very late here on the East Coast as I write this, and there's a huge snowstorm predicted for today, but I wanted to give you some reasonably hopeful feedback. If I get a break from shoveling I will experiment with this and get back to you with details. Unless somebody else gives you a complete answer before I can.

    Good luck!

    --JorgeA
    Last edited by JorgeA; 2009-12-19 at 08:39. Reason: additional information

  4. #4
    129260
    Guest

    Lightbulb It is definitely possible...

    A question that I have is why you would want to do this in the first place?

    Unless you are using the drive to scan other people's computers, or are running low on disk space.

    If disk space is the issue, You could also use add/remove programs and click change remove. You can remove the additional languages, tools and other items you would not need that would take up space. While you are in there, take a look at the programs you have installed and get rid of the ones you do not use. Also use disk cleanup to try to clean up your computer.

    See the page on using disk cleanup:
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312
    (essentially the same for all windows versions.)

    You could also use disk cleanup to remove old system restore
    points. Sometimes restore points are the killer of disk space. Try these tips. Let me know if you need any more help.
    Last edited by 129260; 2009-12-19 at 09:01.

  5. #5
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    Default It looks like it works

    I can now confirm that the idea seems to work well.

    I drag-and-dropped the Spybot folder into a USB flash drive and inserted the flash drive into my laptop computer. Next I opened the Spybot folder on the flash drive and clicked on the program SDMain.exe.

    After getting a single installation question, I ran Spybot. It completed a scan successfully.

    Since I was not certain which drive Spybot did scan (the C: drive or just the flash drive where the program is located), I made sure that it checked the C: drive by adding it to the Directories under Settings, and then ran a second scan. As far as I can tell, it worked just as if I'd installed it onto the laptop's main drive.

    Hope this helps.

    BTW, I second 129260's suggestions for freeing up additional space on your main drive, if they're applicable to your situation. You wouldn't believe the amount of stuff that gets accumulated on the disk after a while.

    --JorgeA

  6. #6
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    thanks to both 129260 and JorgeA for your ideas and efforts. I am still working on this. Like I said, I am not the most savvy PC user. And yes, i have acquired alot of cr#p on the harddrive which I am slowly chipping away at.

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