It's harder than that, but potentially easier. If that makes any sense. In a nutshell, it won't run at all if it's in a different place from where it is installed. Crash recovery can be simple, assuming yoiu don't have a hardware problem. If your system gets buggered by some software debacle, just roll it back via the System Restore tool. If that fails, your second line of defense is to repair the OS installation using the Windows DVD.
In an extreme case where even the repair process fails, it may be useful to have an image that you can restore from. This involves using special software to create the image on another drive, and of course you will need to update it on a regular basis. In event of a failure, you use the image to re-create your boot drive. If this sounds complex, it is, to a degree. It's also unlikely to be something you'll have to resort to.
Many windows applications are much more than just the .exe file. The installation process copies loads of other system files (like ocx's and dll's) into various folders and makes changes to your registry. So it's virtually impossible to take a 'copy' of a complete application installation.
The only method would be an image of your whole hard drive, as kirbic described. Easier imho to install the app from scratch if anything goes wrong.
It's harder than that, but potentially easier. If that makes any sense. In a nutshell, it won't run at all if it's in a different place from where it is installed. Crash recovery can be simple, assuming yoiu don't have a hardware problem. If your system gets buggered by some software debacle, just roll it back via the System Restore tool. If that fails, your second line of defense is to repair the OS installation using the Windows DVD.
In an extreme case where even the repair process fails, it may be useful to have an image that you can restore from. This involves using special software to create the image on another drive, and of course you will need to update it on a regular basis. In event of a failure, you use the image to re-create your boot drive. If this sounds complex, it is, to a degree. It's also unlikely to be something you'll have to resort to.
When I was upgrading my HDD I used Acronis True Image for this and it was very straightforward and worked lovely. They have changed the features quite a bit since I used it a few years ago, but it appears that it still basically works the same.
One thing to keep in mind... Adobe only allows it to be active on two computers. And.... Evidently a new hard drive, unless it comes from an image, is the same as a new computer. I upgraded my hard drive on my desktop computer last year. When I bought a laptop this year, Adobe told me the PS was already active on two computers. So I had to mount and boot off the old drive so that I could deactivate the copy on the old drive.
