Run off external drive
 

I'm new to maya and i was wondering if it was possible to run Maya off an external hard drive

No as far as i know it's not, and even if it where it would probably be a bad idea.

Just install it to your local HD. The only reason i could see for running it of an external drive is to swap the copy of Maya about amongst several machines which violates the license and also wont work.

Dave :)

Thankyou for the responce. My computer just crapped out on me and my laptop isn't powerful enough to render. Oh well :(