Can I install a program to an external hard disk and have it be portable?

Run program from disc?

The short answer is no.

Any program that requires a set up in order to be installed on a PC is, well, installed on that PC.

Program on external drive

It can certainly reside on an external hard disk. I don't recommend it typically because the hard disk could be disconnected or it might actually end up being slower for you.

• But nonetheless it's "installed" on that specific machine.

• If you take that hard disk to a different machine, well, it's not installed.

• So, it's not there for that machine to be able to use. It really doesn't work.

Portable applications

There's a class of applications that do; they are specifically designed to be portable and that's exactly what you would look for in a so-called portable application. Those are the kinds of applications you can simply copy to things like a USB stick or an external hard drive and just run them without running a set up program.

But programs like Adobe Elements, or any other fairly large or significant program that has a set up process in order to be installed on the machine in the first place, can't be done:

• It can't be made portable in the way that you're looking for it to be.

Licensing limitations

And I do have to comment that this is not a way to get around licensing limitations either:

• If it says two, then you need to stick to two or buy additional copies.

• That's what the licensing agreement is all about.

In this particular case, there's no portable solution for you, so you're kind of stuck;

• You will be able to install it on two computers, but that's it.