Dual Boot... which is the best way...?

radiantly · Post by **radiantly** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:39 am

in your opinion what are the pros and cons of having the same letter assigned to xp?

radiantly · Post by **radiantly** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 9:49 am

sorry, maybe i'm asking too much things at the same time... it's that i'm configuring my new DAW and i would set it stable...

do somebody knows how to avoid these conflicts in booting when you assign the same drive letter to both XP?

thank you very much if somebody could reply...

dbmac · Post by **dbmac** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 1:09 pm

The trick to multi-boot setups is to hide OS partitions from each other, so each bootable partition is installed to C: drive.
This is achieved by your boot manager. I use System Commander to handle 3 bootable partitions. Partition Magic should have similar options. You can choose during startup which of three partitions will be C drive.
WinXP has a multi-boot function that is quite different - I don't know how it works.

/dave

radiantly · Post by **radiantly** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 8:19 am

thank you dbmac,
hiding partition is what i would to do!!!

it simply seems that i'm not able to make boot magic do that....
well. yes if partition have different letters,but not having both with the same name.
is it possible to change an OS partition drive letter AFTER the installation ???
aniway i will try system commander too...

thanks...

piet piel · Post by **piet piel** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 12:40 pm

Dudes,

been a long time.
Is it really necessary to install WinXP 2 times? I have 2 different HD's so it IS a possibility, but i find it a waste of space to do so.
What ecactly is the disadvantage of just using dual boot without having 2 installations?

Regards,
manoah

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 1:41 pm

Let say there are a few options:

THE BEST
A system for Audio only

BETTER
A system with double boot, so a "Studio" side and an "Office" side

GOOD
A system with everything installed in a single "C" drive.

If you can afford the first option, much bettern than enything. But most of us can't, as feeding two system with about two GBs of RAM, having two high speed procesors, etc., it's a lot of money.

Then you have double boot, why? Because your system gest:

*About 20% faster

*You can tweak your system in a way that is imposible with internet and other utilities. This tweak gives you a VERY efficient working environment and MUCH more stability, against many driver conflicts and a heavy "C" drive.

*Organized, as there are less things arround, and this FEELS differnet, it's a more relaxed environment.

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 8:36 am

On 2006-01-03 13:41, Nestor wrote:
Then you have double boot, why? Because your system gest:

*About 20% faster

*You can tweak your system in a way that is imposible with internet and other utilities. This tweak gives you a VERY efficient working environment and MUCH more stability, against many driver conflicts and a heavy "C" drive.

Mm, not true. Even a system totally tweaked out for audio will work 100% fine for internet/office. You really don't need to have 1000 gimmicks running in your tray to have your internet apps working properly, just turn them off at boot (i.e have IM/webcam/etc apps *not* start at boot time) and you can just turn them on when you need to use them. XP handles this a lot more gracefully than 98se/ME did, on which dual booting made alot more sense.

This will also be a LOT faster than actually rebooting if you need to do audio, and leaves the option open to access internet/web when doing audio stuff, which is *very* useful sometimes. Having just a firewall and a network interface really won't eat into your processing power, especially not with a modern machine, and again you can easily disable a network connection (and firewall) in XP without needing any sort of reboot. I've dualbooted XP installations before, and all it did was waste diskspace as I basically only used a single installation.

My XP system has no more than 5 or 6 services running, and it's absolutely fine for anything I do (some 3D/POV, some programming/dev, net/office, etc.)

In fact it'd be much simpler to setup several users with a good minimal audio-accetable setup, and dedicate one to audio and the other to net/web.

Also about having 2 computers, you really don't need a fancy machine to do net/office stuff, a 200$ motherboard with everything built-in will do fine.

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 9:36 am

How do you mean to do this? That would be interesting to know. Could you point me out about the steps you get for it please?

Well, I know Symbiote, you're right about what you say, but not completely. You can certainly build a DAW along with office programs and internet acces. Now, I have used double boot for years and the machine IS much faster in one side than the other. Of course, it all depends of the tweaking you perform. I did perform extreme ones with at a great advantage.

One of the problems you may easily experience, is pops and clicks when downloading at very fast speed, while you are working. Of course, in a double boot system, nevertheless, you will not do it, as the other side of the system is switch off. Well... the problem

is that when you do have an internet acces, you start using it along with all your recordings.

I think that, as machines become more and more powerful and OSs becomes more perfected, the need for a double bood will one day desapear, but it is still a good option. I am not intellectualizing anything, I say so exclusively through a long experience, of many years of double boot.

If you tend to work one hour in a project, then go to work in an internet app, the go back and so forth, it is better having everything in a single side. And I have to say that double boot systems are prone, much more prone, to have problems than single boot systems. The most common problems are related to MBR, and they can be fatal sometimes.

If you do long sessions of audio work, let say, 8 or 12 hours, IT IS worth the effort, to get a double boot system.

Please, don't forget to tell me which is your procedure, it will worth the time, as many people could take advantage of your explanatin too, thanks

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 10:08 am

You're right, I'm just saying, your internet/office apps would also work great on your "extreme tweaks 20%-faster" installation =P

If you turn off the downloading apps/etc stuff while you do audio work, everything's going to be fine. Obviously any kind of disk access when you are doing audio recording/playback to/from disk is going to be an issue and cause clicks and pops, but no need to install a whole other XP just for that, you can just close the application!

I also like that I can just leave my sequencer open in the background and not have to reboot/reload projects (both sequencer and SFP) if I want to take a break and do something else.

dbmac · Post by **dbmac** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 10:23 am

My favorite use of a dual boot system is to have a boot partition for testing updates, demos, etc - new software that might compromise a stable setup. I can copy my current working C drive to the test partition and have a no risk test OS in a matter of minutes. I'm also setting up a boot partition for a client so he can work on my DAW without endangering my primary setup.
I use System Commander, and I can use a bootable CD to manage all the partitions without installing the program. This way you can leave the XP original MBR intact.

Multiple boot gives a lot of versatility.

/dave

Post by **garyb** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 1:18 pm

for office/internet one can find an older used box for free or very nearly so....

piet piel · Post by **piet piel** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:02 am

Yeah, dual boot rocks. i tried it. It gives a relaxed feeling of being able to fool around without having the risk to screw up the precious audio setup. Thanks dudes!!