[R] R on a flash drive

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2007, Williams Scott wrote:

> I often run R via a Ceedo virtualisation on a USB drive
> (http://www.ceedo.com/) with XP. It costs a few dollars to it this way,
> but is a very low stress installation and has worked flawlessly, albeit

It is not necessary though, as R does not need 'virtualisation'.  For 
Windows this is covered in the rw-FAQ Q2.6.

> a little slower (barely noticeable).

Perhaps the overhead of Credo?  Once R starts up (which does take longer 
on a slow drive) I found no time-able difference in 2.1.x (all the files 
frequently used from disc are cached on startup).

It would be nice to give the R developers the credit for writing R in such 
a way that it works well from slow media, instead of it being credited to 
an unnecessary commercial product.

> Very handy if you are often working
> on various machines without administrator rights (as I do in clinic) -
> just plug in your USB and go directly back to your project. It then
> removes any trace of you (so they say) when you log out. And you can use
> it for other software (within limits though) you might want to carry
> around.

Many sites would not allow programs to be run from a USB drive or make it 
a breach of usage conditions to do so.

>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Scott
>
> ____________________________
> Scott Williams MD
> Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
> Melbourne
> Australia
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Kane [mailto:jrkrideau at yahoo.ca]
> Sent: Tuesday, 21 August 2007 12:28 AM
> To: John Kane; Erin Hodgess; r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] R on a flash drive
>
> Oops meant to send this to the list.
> --- John Kane <jrkrideau at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
>>
>> --- Erin Hodgess <hodgess at gator.dt.uh.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear R People:
>>>
>>> Has anyone run R from a flash drive, please?
>>>
>>> If so, how did it work, please?
>>
>> Yes I run R, occasionally, on a USB with no problem
>> on
>> WindowsXP. It works well, albeit a bit more slowly
>> than from the hard drive which is as you would
>> expect.
>>
>> The last time I upgraded the USB (to 2.5.0 ?) I
>> simply
>> downloaded R and installed it on the USB drive
>> rather
>> than the C: drive and then installed all my usual
>> optional packages using the normal Rgui interface.
>>
>> I usually have R, Tinn-R and portable versions of
>> OpenOoffice.org, and Firefox installed on the USB.
>>
>>
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>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595