Dual Boot vs Virtual Machine

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jackle
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Jackle

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So I’m building a new computer with an i7 on a 6.4 MT/s motherboard. It’s all together and ready for an OS. I’ve run into a dilemma that I really need some feedback on. Do I create a dual boot or run something like VMware to keep my audio machine clean and fast. Here’s my dilemma…

1.
Create a dual boot machine with Windows 7 on Partition 1 and Window 7 on Partition 2. Partition 1 will be the audio workstation. Partition 2 will be my graphic design etc. machine. Questions: Will I need 2 copies of Windows 7?.. and, well everything else is pretty straight forward.

2.
Install Windows 7 and run a 2nd Windows 7 in a virtual machine. The main install will be my audio machine and the virtual machine will be my graphic design etc. machine. I’d like to go this route if it makes since, simply so that I can switch between both machines with a couple clicks. Questions: What is the best virtual machine to use? How much performance will I loose? Will I need 2 copies of Windows 7? Will there be any graphic issues (color, resolution, pixilation, etc.)? This will be considered my “daily” machine, are there any issues with this being a virtual machine because of this? Other disadvantages?

I greatly appreciate any input. Thanks in advance!
 
silly question maybe? but why do you want two separate instances of win 7 to start with?

i'd understand if you wanted to keep one os for internet etc and one for audio work, but surely if your two main uses are audio and graphic design, one install will do just fine?
 
Steenamaroo thanks for the quick response.

The graphic design instance will also be daily use, including all internet browsing. The audio machine I’d like to be just audio apps and nothing else (including virus scan). My last all in one machine I build (audio and everything else) 8 years ago still runs pretty well. But it was a real pain in the butt to keep it running well. I would Ghost it once every couple of months and had to go back to previous Ghost several times due to viruses, applications that would interfere with how Cubase ran, and Windows updates that interfered with the way Cubase ran. This time around I just feel it would be better to separate the two.
 
fair play then.

i've limited experience with virtual machines (xp on parallels in osx)

other vms may be better, i honestly don't know, but personally i wouldn't want to rely on a vm to give me enough power for audio mixing or graphic design.

my advice? go with option two. two partitions, win 7 installed on each :)

gd luck!
 
overhead on VMs still remains high enough to make them problematic for audio for anything other then very basic work

I've been exploring options of using VM client to run XP apps under a LINUX umbrella . . . its not where I'm going to end up

while dual boot might deal with some of the issues of having a dedicated machine for audio . . . it, in my opinion, doesn't deal with enough of them to make it a reasonable solution to having an audio machine with no external connections

I actually do a fair amount of graphic, vid, animation work and while there are dedicated workstations I do tend to want to be able to connect individual machines via some form of intranet . . . I've dealt with issues long enough that internet junk is not particularly a problem in this scenario (internet via wifi from laptop, typically no hardwired connection to desktop machines or studio laptops) but still leaves issues of network cards, dueling audio and video drivers, etc.

Dual boot might work fine except for catastrophic malware infection just not sure I have enough faith in MS win as an OS (as opposed to being a filing app) to see any serious benefit. But everything else being equal, other then graphics/vid card vs. audio card driver dueling, which will not be entirely resolved with dual boot, I'm not sure I have an particular problem with graphics apps cohabitating with audio ones
 
I solved this issue with a second cheap computer and a switch for the Keyboard, mouse and moniter. I can understand your concern here because I found I needed so much crap installed for internet use I decided to go with two desktops. Also in using Vista there's a list of about 20 settings to optimize for audio, I just couldnt wrap my mind around doing it on one machine. So I tap the scroll key and switch from one to the other. Just a thought.
 
I use VMWare a lot, but it's always for creating a development/test server environment. Running a LAMPP stack is a very different beast from editing media!

I can't think of a way to do the VMWare solution that would really work. If your audio machine is your host, and graphic design your VM, that means your audio machine will need internet connectivity, so it will need antivirus, etc.
If you switch it around, you'll have to somehow get a VM machine to talk to your audio hardware. I'm usually barely able to get basic, onboard audio to work, let alone some kind of external interface.

Either way, your host machine is going to have the overhead of the VM service running, usually even when the VM machine isn't. The VM is going to have a very limited subset of the system resources (RAM, CPU, etc) available to it, so unless your host system is very powerful, you'll probably find it too weak.

As to the 2 copies of Windows, I think if you dual boot, you'd only need one license since at any given time, you have 1 copy of Windows running on 1 computer. The VM solution would require two licenses since you would have 2 copies running simultaneously.
 
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