Reading ebooks from an external hard drive with ADE

[Guest]

I have ADE installed on a netbook [an Acer with a relatively tiny hard drive] and I have found that since I started downloading my ebooks to it the performance on the computer [not surprisingly] has become rather slow.  The obvious solution to me would be to transfer all my current ebooks and download all future acquisitions to a 500 GB external hard drive.  However, I haven't been able to figure out 1) whether this is even possible or 2) how to go about it if it is indeed possible.  Given some of the [IMO ridiculous] restrictions placed on ADE readable ebooks, and some of the horror stories I've seen online, I have been reluctant to experiment, lest my currently perfectly accessible ebooks somehow become permanently off-limits and thereby unreadable.

Is there some solution to my problem?  I have considered:

- simple transfer of my current ebook file folder to the relevant external hard drive [ but have been unable to figure out how to "point" ADE to that location so the ebooks can be read]

- transfer of both ADE and all ebooks to the relevant external hard drive [but am not sure if ADE will work if it's not resident on the main hard drive; additionally can see problems with my authorization if I just pick up everything via cut / past - would it screw up my authorization?]

I'd really like a way to free up the GBs of hard drive space which I used to be able to use for cache purposes but which are now clogged up by these ADE-required files.

TIA for any help.

[Frustrated in AZ]

My 'handle' is a result of similar "frustration". I also happen to use an

Acer laptop built in the mid-'90's.

ADE was built in the 1990's, with a design approach that is a bit obsolete

today. So, the product has some limitations. First, and probably worst,

is that it makes you use your C:\ drive for critical files and the My

Digital Editions folder, which manages the ebooks.

You can have ebooks located elsewhere. Just download the ebook to

a location, then open ADE and use the 'Add Item To Library' function. That

process allows you to tell ADE where the ebook is located.

[BTW: my local computer guru was able to upgrade the hard drive on my Acer

to 100Gb. That solved many, many problems.]

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