riddle me this! 4GB school server, run off thumb drive?

Here's my dilemma:

My laptop has exploded. It was a sad, sad day. Being away from home, and on a school campus with REALLY GOOD computers, I've decided to download GW on the server alloted to me by the school.

I'm actually not sure if it's called a server, but I have my own section that I log into with my school username, and am allowed 4GB of space. Yay. Only problem is, GW takes up...well, a lot more than that. And I can't download all the updates and leave the computer on - anyone can walk by and turn it off!

So I'm thinking maybe I can download GW on my roommate's computer, steal the .dat file, and somehow run it off of a thumb drive? I dunno - I see a lot of kids playing WOW on these computers and I've been wondering how the hell they do it, and I'm thinking it has something to do with those thumb-drives sticking out of all their computers, lol!

Please edumacate my stupid brain.

-Nick

GW runs it at just under 4GB so size should be fine, and yes you can copy the .dat from another source and save yourself the download. However if you want to run it off the Thumb-Drive you would have to install it to that location.

HTH

Can't you just get gw on a usb-stick and run it then?

USB-stick = Thumb drive = Flash Drive, = etc.

@OP - you can install GW on USB drive using the server. Or you can simply copy it off another computer onto the USB drive. When you first plug it into the other computer, run "gw.exe" and it will set itself up to run on the "server" (which simply sounds like a shared computer).

You can run GW off of a USB drive but from personal experience its kinda choppy when paying. Better off just have everything on the flash drive and just copy it to the computer that you are going to be using.

I would have to agree. I've ran GW off a flash drive before just to experience it personally how it would be and it just wasn't as fluid as how a PC can run it.

USB thumb drives have slower data transfer than the hard drive, which would degrade GW's performance.

you're better off having gw.dat saved on the thumb drive, and install GW directly onto the lab computer's hard drive each time with it. the hard drives delete any changes made to them on restart, but you'll get full performance this way.

hmmm How about an external hard drive? I have noticed they are getting cheaper. I would think anything through a USB is going to be slower.

This is probably the way to go.

Download/install guildwars at home or your mate's hoouse, *directly* to the Pen/thumb; then install at school with the thumb.... Although, with that you'd need to take the CD to install it properly. You can't just copy and paste and play, can you? Hmmm

Yeah, you can throw GW all over the place as long as GW.EXE and GW.DAT are togther not matter where, they will run. If you run it from an ext disk or flash drive it will install shortcuts and registry entries onto the host computer, but yeah it works. I have been copying GW to a back up disk when I need to reinstall Windows, then when I'm done I just run GW off of it or copy it back without really reinstalling GW physically.

Probably, as I said above I did it and it did actually seem normal speed....but if you really NEED to run games from an external drive and want to see performance...I'm guessing an external drive of a high RPM, SATA to a sata connector on the PC or FireWire 800 from a SATA ext drive to the PC would do it.

Depending on your finances how about a small laptop drive in a case.
Shouldn't break the bank and speed should be far better than a thumb drive.

I was thinking if your laptop hard drive survived just get an external case for it, ebay usually has loads of 2.5 inch external cases as do many computer stores.

Then just plug it into a usb or better a usb2 port and your away.

some of the better flash drives these days are noticeably faster - the only difference with a slower drive is going to be load times in between areas in GW anyways....

get a decent USB stick and it works.
tried it before

Your school allows you to install and run arbitrary code on their machines?

Worked in schools for nearly 30 years and I found most of the staff well out of the loop when it came to computer skills.
Like the time they gave all the staff a secure login password based on their initials and room number, how long do you recon that took to break.

The average uk school pupil will be able to run rings around any "safeguards" and yes run code any way they want on the pc they have been allocated.
That said most schools have a server unit that is securely protected and anything running on the desk tops will not affect that.

my school allows us to install stuff on their computers, but uses a program that resets the hard drive to a predetermined state on restart. they've also removed the "logout" option in the taskbar.

a friend of mine got around that by writing a batch file with only one word in it: logout. this allowed him to logout of his session without restarting, therefore keeping all the hard drive changes. it took the university a year to figure out how to fix it.