| Make sure to go full portable on windows. Portable software on windows means software that doesn't need to be installed (or is installed only once and never again), software that doesn't depend on any other software in windows (except for runtime libraries), and finally, software that is capable of discovering it's own path at runtime and capable of storing its state data somewhere on that same path. This ensures that your portable software root folder can work on any windows straight away. This way you make sure windows will never loose stuff that's important to you. This way you can change computers at will, you can keep working at multiple computers at a time (just by plugging your USB drive or copying your folder). Simply put, by going all portable you make sure windows is just an easily replaceable underlying engine for your software stack. Given windows' and x86's commitment to supporting legacy software, I have my portable drive in use for about 20 years now, happily expanding my software library and surviving at least 10 generations of hardware and windows upgrades without a hitch. Here is my recipe:
Get yourself a fast SSD or USB drive dedicated to your own windows portable library. Format it as one partition. Make the partition occupy drive letter A:. Having a predetermined drive letter that doesn't change helps with software that's not 100% portable but still stores absolute paths instead of relative ones. Now create a single folder on that drive, like, for example "MyPC" or whatever. Inside that folder create 3 subfolders: Programs, Documents, Install.
Always put all your portable programs in the "A:\MyPC\Programs\" folder. Always put all your documents in the "A:\MyPC\Documents\" folder. Put driver files and runtime libraries in the "A:\MyPC\Install\" folder. For all three, feel free to create subfolders as needed, either per topic, per group, or however your brain envisions data trees. You can find plenty of portable windows software in the links provided below. Few of my favorites for specific tasks: - my personal auto-run and launch hooks: https://www.dcmembers.com/skwire/download/splat/ - my personal system tray app/doc shortcuts: http://jacquelin.potier.free.fr/QuickWayToFolders/ - my personal desktop icons: https://www.cylog.org/utilities/toolbox.jsp - system monitoring utilities: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pro... https://github.com/LibreHardwareMonitor/LibreHardwareMonitor - how to keep secret data on a portable drive: https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Home.html Find more portable apps in these libraries: https://portapps.io/ https://portableapps.com/ https://www.portablefreeware.com/ |