Configuring a new computer soon - separate HDrives for OS & Data
partitions, but it will possibly have to do some office duties too
unfortunately (though I might just use my old DAW laptop for
internet/office. Nice to reduce the number of fans going though & have the
lappy ready for portable audio use.) Should I just keep this relatively
small amount of data on the C partition of the new one with the OS or is it
worth creating a separate partition just for word/excel/email type data?

I know you'll be saying use separate computers to truly "firewall" the DAW,
plus software firewall & antivirus will throttle the DAW performance (the
connection is ADSL)...
but with a dual core processor would it automatically devote one (3.2GHz)
core to audio while the other's handling the internet & office stuff (and
maybe video redraws) and is there a way to have the devoted data drive
inaccessible to the internet/viruses? Each core will have 1GHz of memory.
Mostly using PTLE 7.

Karl Engel wrote:

Configuring a new computer soon - separate HDrives for OS & Data
partitions,

Check what the audio application asks for, it may prefer multiple "sets
of spindles" for data, ie. that you have audio data space on both
physical disks.

but it will possibly have to do some office duties too
unfortunately (though I might just use my old DAW laptop for
internet/office.

Just remember to disable any and all indexing services and "easy start"
pre-loaders.

I know you'll be saying use separate computers to truly
"firewall" the DAW, plus software firewall & antivirus
will throttle the DAW performance (the connection is ADSL)...

And the firewall is minimum a 3com 3c858 or similar. Yes it is. What
kills the concept of using it as GP officeputer is the fact that you can
not have antivirus software checking every darn executable file on a daw
and that using internet from it will some day result in you falling into
the trickware trap.

but with a dual core processor would it automatically devote
one (3.2GHz) core to audio while the other's handling the
internet & office stuff (and maybe video redraws)

No no no, they are allocated on pr. thread basis, all well written
applications use multiple threads. That is why you never loose a menu on
the windows desktop just because something else needs to be redrawn.

and is there a way to have the devoted data drive
inaccessible to the internet/viruses?

Yeees, but not the one you want. Back in the Amiga days, back before
real high tech computer development began, we had software that allowed
you to clip a rectangular block of text in the middle of a page and yes,
software that provided a one click way to read-only status for an entire
drive. The latter would provide what you want - if it existed, it could
be extremely handy - but also generally prevent you from using the
computer. Antivirus software is already able to intercept some or all
"reads" and check what is going on, it would probably also be possible
to make it check all "writes", but it would be a performance killer
rather than killer performance. No network cable is more likely to
provide what you ask for, but it is probably impractical nowadays, no
general internet usage from the box in question will however be very
wise.

Each core will have 1GHz of memory.

Gigabyte, not Gigahertz, anyway, that is not at all how windows memory
allocation does it. Each application will have a 4 gigabyte memory
space, with 2 of those being allocated to the OS and most of it being
"available if needed", ie. pie in the sky and all multi-threaded
applications will run distributed over both cores.

Mostly using PTLE 7.

Get Chost 10, it is the only way to the Powerquests excellent drive
image backup application nowadays. Keep OS and applications on a
separate partition so that it is easy to back up and easy to reinstall
in case it is needed, perhaps to roll back a software or windows update.
Just my opinion, your mileage may vary.


/Peter Larsen