Hi Guys Not having much luck at the moment . Recently lost my CNc router PC hard drive and since then have seen another one playing up ( Driver Pulse test  erratic or saying toooooooo Slow )  stepper Motor s operate But very jerky and not what im used to seeing from my Baby :-( have got my settings loaded back as per the original machine but now on another PC and something is definietly not right ...My Option is now to invest in a new MOBO hardrive  and Ram and canibalise all the other bits to make a new CNC router PC system ...then i had a thought , with all these portable external drives around i have to ask can mach3 be run form one of these ? the reason being my workshop ( OK OK large Shed Insulated but still bloody cold at this time of year ;-) the router PC tends to live there and don't really want connect / disconnect it everytime i have to stop work for a while,  but it occured to me that if i had all my fil;es screensets etc on an external USB harddrive say, i could get the best of both worls portability/security wise... does any one know if this is (a ) allowed and (B) is it possible ....  if Cold is a factor in the PC dyding then will have to do iit the hard way summers almost here :-) but just a thought before i commit to the new system.. have a full license so dont mean to step out of line or invalidate it by asking thi question .

Not sure how cold it gets (not sure where you are) but in my workshop I get the soluble oil coolant freezing in my lathes and mills on occasions (need a touch of antifreeze in them ) and I dont have issues with my computers, my last workshop was even colder, often had icicles hanging from the inside of the roof 
 As for external drives, well I use a Gigacube to transport files around but I always load them onto the machine in question before I use them.

Hood

cheers hood . its most probebly paranoia on mypart now cos o the grief with my router Pc , im only down in london so we really dont hardly ever see the stuff  you guuys are dealing with . going to a PCX fair tomoroww so hopefully by the evening my baby should be back up and running properly , thanks again good buddy for the feedback. can i ask one more question ... regading mach files for backup . Are ther certain files that i can save and transfer over to a new machine in the event of hostory repeating itself .. INI - Dat - Sys Files that i can jucst copy over to the new system to save time reinventing  the wheel as it were ... i get the impression that when config parameters are changed and you do a save function they must be stuck somewhere. so is it just  one file or many .. save a new config and then did a search for files that were recently updated but got several files so not sure which one was important  :-)

PS shoulda used a spell checker texting gets u into bad habits typing wise LOL:-) look past the crappy spelling in my post Please .

Ha ha no probs with the spelling.
 Yes files you want to save are the xml for the profile you use, ie if standard mill its Mach3Mill,xml if you have a custom profile it will have the name of your custom profile. Also save the macro folder for the profile you use as it contains the standard as well as any custom macros and also tooltable etc. Brains folder if you have any brains, any custom screensets and their associated images and of course you want to save the Mch1Lic.dat.

Hood

Thanks again my man for understanding and helping me out, could not get my new hard drive today so still faffing about but hope to be back up and breaking cutters and mangling wood soon :-) have found the files you mentioned now, so thanks to you i should be able to save some time transferring to the new system.