Thought I'd ask here as I had no luck in Ob General -

==========================

After installing Oblivion (goty) from disc, I copied the vanilla oblivion directory to an external hard drive. Am I ok to uninstall oblivion via the launcher, then any time I want to play oblivion, I can simply copy the oblivion directory from my external hard drive and play it like normal? I've tried this and the game is playable despite uninstalling, thing is the launcher then no longer allows me to uninstall the game, so would uninstalling it simply be a case of deleting the copied OB directory?

I'm asking if there’s a difference between these two install methods? I know one is not technically an install, but do I need to worry about any mods not working properly if I simply play Oblivion from copying the directory from an external HD?

The reason is that its much quicker to copy a folder than to install the game from disc. I tend to uninstall games when Im not playing them rather than let them clutter my computer.

Or lets say I install Oblivion goty (no mods), then delete my Oblivion directory without uninstalling via the launcher.. what exactly would be left on my system?

Win 8.x is likely to check the install and remove it from Add/Remove Programs & Features in a maintenance pass.

Stuff left over is just the registry entries, a few small files in %AppData%\Local\Oblivion, and similar in Documents\My Games\Oblivion.

An alternative to deletion is just compress the oblivion data directory to one file. Still uses space but it's a bit easier on the file system or it can be easily stored on the RD anyway.