Many programs give you a choice of drives upon which to install, but still insist on writing some files to the boot drive. Some don't even ask, and install to the boot drive no matter what you want. I don't have Reaper so I can't answer your question about that particular program, but why not just try it?

The size of flash drives can be amazingly large now, like 128 GB (though those are still somewhat expensive). Your idea is a good one, to travel light with the programs you want. It's amazing we can even consider doing that now.


BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.