External USB SSD drive

RootsMagic
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Can RootsMagic be run off of a external SSD? I know the main program has to be on the main disk. I am talking about the folders (data, gedcom, reports, etc.). RM11, Mac version.

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Short answer, yes.

Long answer, yes, but be sure you have a backup plan in place for the external SSD. Just because it’s external doesn’t mean that it doesn’t need to be backed up.

I don’t know exactly how external drives work on a Mac. On Windows, they can be slower than your main hard drive. On Windows, it doesn’t have to be an external HDD to be slower. An external SSD can also be slower. Indeed, a thumb drive is really just a small external SSD.

It’s not the device that’s that’s slower per se. Rather, it’s the way the external drive connects to the computer. I doubt that the speed would be an issue for you, but you could try RM with the data on an external drive and also try RM with the data on your main hard drive and see what you think about the speed.

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Why put data on an external SSD? Keep everything on your mac internal drive. Time machine and cloud service automatic backup of all data, faster operation, no external drive connection issues.

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Well, for starters. I can take the SSD with me and work on my genealogy stuff elsewhere. I just built a home made NAS from a old Dell PC I had laying around. I will start backing up my genealogy work to it, instead of depending on iCloud. Plus I like to change things around once in a while. You may be right about being faster on the internal drive. But I have seen a little speed since moving it to the SSD.

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You can install RootsMagic itself right onto the USB SSD drive AND set up data folders on it, as well.

But, there’s a “hitch”. Most recent versions, of the RM installer, first check to see if that version is already installed on the current machine being used. If YES, it no longer offers the option of choosing another install folder destination.

With your old Dell PC, that’s NOT a problem. With other Windows PC’s, wherever you travel, that’s also not a likelihood. Just hook up that portable drive and run RM directly off of it (double-click RootsMagic.exe within it’s RootsMagic 10 folder).

The FamilySearch and Ancestry TreeShare features WILL need the host machine to have support for the Microsoft Edge Webview2 runtime service (for two-factor aunthentication).

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