Dual HDD / Dual Boot MBP FCP Question

[thedatapusher]

Thinking about ditching the optical drive in my mid 2008 2.5Ghz 15" Macbook Pro and adding a small but fast SSD drive.

My idea is to have two hard drives obviously. I would like to have the SSD drive be my specialized drive for running FCP and possible After Effects.

The older 250GB drive that is the original equipment would be my main drive. I would do all my web design, flash, photoshop, illustrator, ftp, ssh, programming and web surfing/everyday stuff.

Both Drives would be bootable. the 250 drive would have snow leopard and everything else on it and the SSD drive would have snow leopard as well.

Is this possible or practical? Would the gains in performance and stability gained from segmenting the two systems be noticeable and worth it?

I've seen some articles on dual booting different OS's on the same drive but never on their own exclusive drive with the same OS.

Thanks
Steve

 

[mulo]

its possible

 

[Eddyisgreat]

Is this possible or practical? Would the gains in performance and stability gained from segmenting the two systems be noticeable and worth it?

Well, it would be a good idea for system stability to have your most important apps on a wholly seperate install. The question is are they so important to warrant it. You can achieve an almost sort of not really effect by just having seperate user accounts; one for personal use, one for webdev, on for FCP/AE, but that won't be as good as a seperate OS.

You'll also have to take a look at licensing issues. Are you using any Adobe CS products? You get two concurrent activations at the same time, so if you already have two seperate installs, you won't be able to activate AE on the third install.

 

[alphaod]

You'll also have to take a look at licensing issues. Are you using any Adobe CS products? You get two concurrent activations at the same time, so if you already have two seperate installs, you won't be able to activate AE on the third install.

For Adobe products, it's not really a hassle… you can deactivate the software every time you switch to the other side (and activate on the other side).

 

[Eddyisgreat]

For Adobe products, it's not really a hassle… you can deactivate the software every time you switch to the other side (and activate on the other side).

That sounds like an epic PITA. I wish they'd let us pick between dongle and activation.

 

[thedatapusher]

I don't think the activation on AE will be an issue since I plan on keeping the FCP drive/system off line. If anything, just access to my offline file server.

Any ideas or suggestions on doing this? Things to avoid or common mistakes made?

Thanks all

 

[thedatapusher]

You'll also have to take a look at licensing issues. Are you using any Adobe CS products? You get two concurrent activations at the same time, so if you already have two seperate installs, you won't be able to activate AE on the third install.

With 2 OS's on 2 drives I only see 2 activations, not a third. Am i missing something?

And the reasoning to have a single ssd drive dedicated to FCS is just for stability. The less stuff going on in that drive, the less that can cause any issues, corruption etc. Plus since SSD drives are crazy expensive, I figure a 100GB drive will be (hopefully) just the right size for the studio.