Using a DAW for things other than music?

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nommad

New member
Hello. Is it a big no-no to install games, ms word, etc. on a computer you plan on using mostly for music recording? (I will have 2 30 GB 7,200 hard drives, 800Mhz P3, 256MB RAM, etc). Since I will have a dedicated audio drive, is it ok to "corrupt" the boot drive with other stuff? Or am I asking for trouble?
Thanks! ~ Michael
 
nommad,

You know, I hear that suggested a lot, and maybe it's true to a large degree, but hell, I can't afford a dedicated music computer, I have to use it for everything. And (knock on wood) so far it seems fine. The thing is to avoid letting apps load up all kinds of crap that attempt to help you. For example, the Office Toolbar, or some scheduler thing, or Find Fast... but Windows itself will do a lot of that with a standard install, too. If you follow the basic rules about keeping nothing running save your audio apps, I think you will have very little trouble. I'm doing that, and so far so good. You might also look at the Hardware Profile thing -- you can create another profile that has certain devices, like a scanner, or a modem, say, disabled. I needed to do that in my previous machine to get reasonable performance (I turned off the network card and modem). In my current setup I haven't had to do that yet.

-AlChuck
 
my boot drive is totally corrupted. Im using it right now. Ive got msword and photoshop and a jillion audio programs.

BUT!! I DONT have the following...
ANY internet crap like realplayer or anything that tries to claim any part of the audio domain.....or
Anything in the Startup folder except my Mixtreme software...

and it works great.
xoxoxo
 
the last guy was right... dual boot... my idea would be this:

hda:
hda1 (5-15 gigs, your choice) - win98, word, photoshop, etc... whatever you want, just nothing pro audio related
hda2 (15 -25 gigs, cooresponding to hda1) - win98 or nt (i'm pretty sure you should be able to do 2 win98's, almost positive you can use nt... i've only dualbooted with win9* and linux so i can't help ya too much there), cakewalk/ntrack/protools/drum machines/plugins/whateveryouwantforaudio, etc

then hdb:
hdb1 (30gigs) - your projects (wavs, etc)


i use linux for the most part and that's where i'm getting the hd** junk from, but if i'm correct, it applies to general os's (windows just asigns letters like c: and d :).. hda would likely be your first hard drive (was on mine) and hdb would be your second (was on mine)... the 1's and 2's would be partition numbers...

good luck
 
can i ask something ?? im using my pc solely for recording , i use a notebook for everything else.. I seem to have a lot of problems running through windows , well not a lot , but just freezing up , that sort of thing ... would i benefit greatly from using another operating system?? and are there any out there developed specifically for audio workstations???
Spider
 
Thanks for the replies! Is setting up a dual boot on your 1st drive difficult? I am comfortable with computers on a end-user software level, but not with programming. Is a program like masterbooter (thanks emeric) all I need, or is there a lot of tweaking and knowledge necessary? Should I take it in to a computer store & have it done for me? Also, can I install the same copy of Win98 twice, or do I need two seperate copies? Thanks again -
~ Michael
 
It depends on what OSes you're planning on using. I would suggest W98 for gaming and W2000 for recording, if your soundcard and recoring software is W2000 compatible. If you go with that, it's like installing windows, only you do it twice. No great knowledge is required. Istall 98 first, then 2000 and select "fresh install" or whatever it's called and not the default "upgrade". If you get the question about converting the drive to NTFS instead of the FAT32 that it is now, select "no" as W98 cannot boot off NTFS.

W98+NT is a bit more tricky but I'll explain it if you need it.

I guess you can install W98 twice on one machine if you have something like master booter to separate them.

/Ola
 
Get a product like PartitionMagic or something similar. It creates bootable partitions pretty easily, and would let you create a second partition for recording without toasting the OS already setup on your machine.

It's pretty easy to use (although that isn't strictly true when using it under Windows NT 4)

- gaffa
 
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