Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

[WaltMorgan]

Has anyone tried this? I've noticed that it takes an extremely long time to bring up the splash screen when Alpha 5 V9 is loaded from an external USB drive. According to Task Manager in WIN XP Pro SP3 "ALPHA5.EXE" consumes 74,904 K of RAM.

[forskare]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

Has anyone tried this? I've noticed that it takes an extremely long time to bring up the splash screen when Alpha 5 V9 is loaded from an external USB drive. According to Task Manager in WIN XP Pro SP3 "ALPHA5.EXE" consumes 74,904 K of RAM.

Hello Walt,

I assume you mean that either A5v9 or A5v9RT is on the hard drive and the app is on the jump drive. I do this all the time but I do not have much code on the app and no code in the start up other than a form loads. I suspect there can be many reasons that affect the apps load time, both sowtware and hardware. I have been able to install the RT on the jump drive so you might want to try that.

How does other software load from a jump drive such as word processor docs and spreadsheets?

[WaltMorgan]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

Thanks for your reply.

No, I've installed A5V9 on an attached USB 2.0 drive. It just takes a very, very long time to get to the splash screen. I understand that it would, more than likely, load much faster from the local hard drive. I'm just surprised at the great differences in load time.

[Doug Page]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

From my understanding, in order for Alpha to do its magic, it loads an awful lot at the start of an application in order to speed things up during operation. And then the fact that you are doing this on a USB stick only compounds the problem as they are actually very, very slow.

[forskare]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

Thanks for your reply.

No,...

I don't follow you? "No" ???? No What?

I've installed A5V9 on an attached USB 2.0 drive.

If you connect a jump/flash drive or exterior HD via USB you can install A5 but it will ONLY work with the computer on which it was originally connected when it was installed. That's because of the way Alpha has it set up to register with the computer.

You can install A5 Run Time on a jump/flash drive etc. and that will allow you to operate any A5 database on a computer to which it is connected. I don't see any value in this because if there is a A5 database on a computer, it will already have A5 or A5 RT already installed.

You could have the database app on a jump/flash drive and plug it into a computer with A5 or A5 RT.

In any of the above scenarios, A5 should have no problem loading rather quickly.

There are some factors which may be contributing to your problem; A slow jump/flash drive; The way you have it set up; A slow computer, etc.

So, specifically, what did you use and how did you use it?

kenn

[forskare]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

From my understanding, in order for Alpha to do its magic, it loads an awful lot at the start of an application in order to speed things up during operation. And then the fact that you are doing this on a USB stick only compounds the problem as they are actually very, very slow.

USb sticks, vary in speed as do SD cards. Example, One can have an SD card for your camera but unless it is a 'fast' SD card, it will take longer to write the photo to the card. I use a SanDisk U3 Cruzer Micro USB Device for which there a many software applications written to be installed on it. (A5 isn't one but A5 RT will do just fine, but Why?) There isn't much difference in the load time between the app on the computer and the jump drive.

I wish I could install A5 on a jump drive. I'd gladly us that as my 2nd computer.

kenn

[csda1]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

The regular versions of Alpha 5 require installing and activating to the Windows registry, and thus a USB stick version would only work with those that it was set up for, which sort of negates the advantage, as they could easily be installed on those same machines.

Nevertheless, while it is possible for any version including the runtime to be installed on a flash drive, the risk, for the most common technology today, is that each bit in the pen stick only has a maximum number of write cycles before failing. Alpha writes a lot of data to it's EXE directories and below, although that has gotten much better in version 9, yet I believe there are places where v9 still writes to the exe directory (besides during updates and installations) occasionally, and that will cause early failures to the flash drive. But v9 may finally be exe directory write-free. This needs to be checked and verified. Also, the application should not use the exe directory for the same reason.

Currently A5v9 (at current release levels) REQUIRE an addin library to be installed in the exe's addins_installed directory or the application directory for them to work. While addins are not normally changed alot, this is an example of a case where writes are required to the exe subfolder for addins (e.g calendar addin, CSDA Code Utility, etc).

Note: The CSDA code utility install program will move it to a safer directory as soon as it works elsewhere on a reinstall with future releases of a5v9.

Also, if you are using a runtime, you definitely need to make sure the private and temp directories are anywhere other than the pen stick.

[WaltMorgan]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

My sincere thanks to all!

My motivation for installing on an external USB drive was to conserve diskspace on my hard drive. I'm using a 250-GB Western Digital USB drive for this. In all honesty, i've only been "exploring" A5V9 and so the load time was tolerable.
Now, though, I plan to be using it more I've noticed the extremely long boot time:

Start to Load: 12:11:00
End of Load: 12:14:55
Time to Load: 3:55 (3 minutes, 55 seconds)
Mem Used: 75,532 K

My question now is what steps must I follow to uninstall from the USB drive and to install on the harddrive?

Again, thanks for all comments.

Walt

[csda1]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

Hi Walt,

Let me just clarify my previous answer when I said application directory. I meant the database directory, where the ADB file is stored, not the working directories that A5v9 uses off the user's directories which are OK to use.

To uninstall from the USB, I'd just uninstall A5 from the USB (to clean up the registry), and reinstall it in the proper directory. This might require reactivating it, but should cause no problem as long as it was the same computer that it was previously installed from.

[WaltMorgan]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

Ira,

Thank you for the info and I have emailed customer support to request reactivation onto the hard drive.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards,

Walt

[forskare]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

Hey Ira, thanks for further enlightenment. I do appreciate it.

Ira,

Thank you for the info and I have emailed customer support to request reactivation onto the hard drive.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards,

Walt

Walt, You should be able to reactivate w/o customer support. After A5 is installed and you open A5, a window pop-up will prompt you for your license number. After that, you will be prompted for activation and one of the choices is online activation. Simply click the online button and you should be activated within 10 seconds or less, depending on your internet connection.

A5 is important enough that id you are running out od disk space on your 250 gb hd, you might want to consider an exterior hd and move a bunch of stuff to the exterior hd. A5 should remain on your computer, not the exterior hd. Although you could install A5 on an exterior, every time you want to use A5, you would have to plug in the exterior drive. If you don't mind doing that, I guess it's OK but it's not the way I would do it.

kenn

[GwendolynLisa]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

Hello,

I'm still new so please forgive me if this question sounds basic. I have recently lost much of my desktop access. My AlphaFive software was completely installed on my desktop. Based on a couple of the messages, it appears that I can install all the software on a flash drive (USB, take it to my laptop and build my application. I have a couple of flash drives, one is 8g. Am I off base with this or understanding it correctly? Thank you for any and all help. Sincerely, Gwen

Hello Walt,

I assume you mean that either A5v9 or A5v9RT is on the hard drive and the app is on the jump drive. I do this all the time but I do not have much code on the app and no code in the start up other than a form loads. I suspect there can be many reasons that affect the apps load time, both sowtware and hardware. I have been able to install the RT on the jump drive so you might want to try that.

How does other software load from a jump drive such as word processor docs and spreadsheets?

[forskare]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

Hi Gwen,

I have been able to install the A5RT on a flash drive but A5 cannot be installed unless it is plugged into the the computer that was used to install A5. That has been my experience.

I know that's not what you wanted to hear but how sweet it would be if we could us A5 that way.

kenn

[GwendolynLisa]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

Hello Kenn,

Thank you for your quick response. You are correct. That is not the answer that I was looking for. Perhaps I can think of a work around; develop most of the application on the USB drive, move it to the desk top and run it. May I ask another question(s), please. Are you running Alpha5 on a desktop or a laptop? Perhaps, I can do an install on my laptop and start developing my application there. My challenge is lack of access to my desktop, which could be a significant show-stopper. Thank you for your time and quick response. Very Sincerely, Gwen

[Ed Barley]

Re: Running Alpha 5 V9 from External USB Drive

Hi Gwen,

You are allowed by Alpha to install your development copy of Alpha on your desktop and also on your laptop to develop your applications.
I also from time to time transport my applications on a USB drive to make changes and such, as it is very convient.

Regards

Ed