Dual boots, dual drives, how to?

[ap]

I understand the advantages of two operating systems, and also two drives. I'm very unclear as to the actual execution.

1) Do you want all applications, including your recording app. i.e. Logic, on one drive and nothing but audio data going on the second drive? If so, then I assume audio apps are capable of existing on one drive while writing to another?

2) Where do the two OS's exist? On the same drive?

3) How do you create two OS's? It seems to me that when I run the 98lite.exe, I'll modify my existing '98 when what I really want is a second, completely separate OS, right?

I just downloaded 98lite and the manual seems to assume a computer savvy user, fails to explains some basic concepts and uses lot's of jargon etc. While I don't shy away from matters technical (I built my DAW myself), I would like to get to recording as soon as possible instead of trying to figure out all this by trial and error. I think if someone could give me a good general overview of the process, I could figure out the particulars from the manual.

Incidentally, one of my favorite resources, "SCSI vs IDE Bus Mastering for DAW's" (a HUGE and very detailed article by internet standards) http://www.txconnect.com/home/ignot/article/art.htm , makes an interesting point: the main advantage of dual drives is the ability to write the audio data at the outer tracks of the disk where the higher sector count yields faster read/write throughput. This can be achieved just as well on one drive by partitioning and writing audio to the outer partition.

 

[Emeric]

1. Yes, just tell your audio software to write all data to the second drive.

2. The 2 OS's exist on the main drive, in different partitions.

3. Yes, what you need to do is first, create 2 partitions. Using a boot manager program, my favorite is this one http://www.masterbooter.com , You install you first instance of the OS - lets say your full blown, internet gaming OS. After installing that you 'hide' it, using the bootmanager, and install your second recording OS.

Eventually, what you end up with is a menu when you first bootup, allowing you to boot to whatever OS you choose.

I'm not familiar with the newest version of mrbooter, I have the previous. If you like I can go into more detail on how to set it up, and email you the previous version.

 

[ap]

How did I know you'd have the answer? This ww.emeric.com/bbs is an excellent site.

Bootmagic came with PartitionMagic so that's what I'll use.

I'm a little bummed- just realised that the "sleek" option in 98lite requires that you own Windows 95, which I don't. They should call it 95lite! Guess I'll have to use the "chubby" option. This is from the 98lite site:

"CHUBBY is not quite as fast as the SLEEK Windows95 Explorer, but you keep the Windows98 shell enhancements like the in-situ start menu editing, single click, quick-launch toolbars."

I don't even know what these features are. Is it even worth going to chubby 98lite from a standard 98? I have 800 PIII, 256 ram, 7200 rpm seagate drive.

 

[Diragor]

Looking at your system specs, I wouldn't even bother with this stuff. I'm getting along just fine with a Celeron 375 (overclocked 333), 128MB RAM and two 20GB UDMA/66 drives. I can't imagine you'd have any trouble with your PIII-800 running a full Windows 98 installation (I'm using ME now, but used 98 for quite a while). The full-blown 98 installation may use up a little more memory and do things a little slower when you're moving around between programs and stuff than if you were running a lite version, but in the end I'd bet that the difference in the performance of your recording software would be negligable.

 

[Emeric]

Diragor has a good point. When I first started using win98lite, I was using an overclocked 300 to 450MHz, than to a 650MHz PIII and now a 800 PIII. The difference probably won't be as significant on the faster systems. But every bit counts. What I do like about 98lite is that it gets rid of the web integration, IE etc. That does speed things up a tad. Also, I must be using the chubby version, I was using the sleek with 95 shell, but switched at some point. I'm using W2K most of the time now, but go back to 98lite on occasion.

 

[ap]

Hmm, I was starting to think 98lite wouldn't make alot of difference for faster machines. Alas, I already payed for it, it's probably eventually gonna give me an extra track or a few extra plugins (right?), and it's kinda fun so I'm gonna go ahead and install it.

I plan on using one drive with multiple partitions. Seems I've got 5 things to put up:

1)multi-track audio data
2)98lite
3)Logic
4)full blown 98se
5)all miscellaneous non-audio stuff.

Now, how many partitions do I need and what goes where?

From what emeric said, I need at least two just for each OS. Now I assume I want Logic on the part. w/ 98lite, and misc. on the part. w/ 98se. Then make a third part., C, with nothing but audio data being written to it. Would this work? Is there a better way?

Is there anything else that has to be on a particular partition? How about CD burning software(I use Plextor's MVP that came with the burner)? Does that need to go on the same partition as any of the above?

Can the individual partitions use each other's programs? i.e. in the above scenario, could I still use Logic if I'm running in 98se, or use, say CD burning software while running in 98lite? (Of course I understand 98lite chubby won't have internet capability)

 

[Diragor]

You've got the right idea with the three partitions if that's what you want to do. Either OS could run a program on any partition, it just depends on what OS is running when you install it. For example, if you put 98lite on C: and full-blown Win98 on D:, if you are running 98lite and install Logic to drive D: it'll work fine. If you reboot into Windows98 (full) and try to run Logic it probably won't work because the installation program added entries to the registry that 98lite maintains, not to mention maybe adding files to the windows\system directory for 98lite and installing icons, etc. Some programs (notably games, esp. older ones) only need to be installed under one OS and will run under both without doing anything special because they don't use the registry or install stray files outside the program's directory, but for most programs you'll have to install it under each OS. You can, however install it to the same place twice so you don't create duplicates of the files in program's directory (you follow?).

I'm seriously skeptical about the advantages of multiple partitions on one drive to improve performance (to the degree that it'll make a noticeable difference). It seems to me that a MUCH greater advantage can be had by having two seperate drives, each on its own IDE port (not daisy-chained master/slave). A single drive, partitioned or not, will still be limited by the maximum transfer rate of the one IDE port to which it's connected. I'm not criticizing your decision to try it, I just don't see how a single partitioned drive could compete with two drives. I tried to hit that article you mentioned but the link isn't working for me.

 

[ap]

Just tried the link and it worked for me. It's at audioamigo.com and it's titled SCSI vs IDE I think. I think what you just said is why the authors went to the trouble of mentioning it- the advantages of some things is not always caused by what seems intuitively obvious. This is kinda a theme througgout the whole article which explains why SCSI is not always the best overall or even fastest.

But make no mistake, I definitely plan on getting two drives, but not for speed or track #'s.

 

[Emeric]

Partitions are great for seperating OS's, dual boot. But using a seperate drive for 'audio data only', is really the route to take. That's where the real advantage is, as Diragor states. No performance advantage in writing the audio data to the same physical hard drive, but to a seperate drive - better performance, and more security -to a point. Not really security, maybe peace of mind... no not even that. Still need to back up to something, but I do like having all my audio data on a removable hard drive, rather than meshed in with everything else. Almost like it's a reel of tape.

So, if your buying another drive just for audio data:

- install your recording software on the boot/partition that you use for recording.
- install your games/internet and other stuff on that boot/partition.

Just keep your data organized. I don't know what multitrack software you use, but it should have an option of where it's writing the data to.

Best to create in advance, seperate folders for each project, and subfolders within for each song. That way you don't have wav's written all over the place, and sometimes overwritting each other...

 

[ap]

This is from PartitionMagic's help file:

If you have multiple primary partitions on your hard disk, only one primary partition may be visible and active at a time. The active partition is the partition from which an OS is booted at computer startup. Primary partitions other than the active partition are hidden, preventing their data from being accessed. Thus, the data in a primary partition can be accessed (for all practical purposes) only by the OS installed on that partition.

By creating an extended partition and then dividing it into logical partitions, you can:
Access the Same Files from Multiple Operating Systems
Make Efficient Use of Disk Space
Simplify File Access and Enhance File Security

Multiple logical partitions do not need to be hidden like primary partitions. You can have many logical partitions visible at the same time. Therefore, you can access data stored in a logical partition from multiple OSs installed in different primary or logical partitions, provided that the logical partition uses a file system that the OSs recognize.


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