Two Copies of OSX on Same System

[darwen]

Hey Guys,

I have been running OSX on both partitions of a dual partitioned drive for some time now. I need to do this because I run both Avid and Final Cut. Avid hates when you update your system and Final Cut hates when you don't update your system. I keep all my media on an external and both partitions use it for storage. The solution I have works great, except I'm running out of storage space on my internal drive.

I'd like to move the Avid partition out to a USB drive and boot from that for the rare times I use Avid. I'd still keep my media on an external and use my internal drive for the primary boot (my final cut system). I hear this would be a horribly slow option though as a flash drive is not quite fast enough for a boot option.

My alternative is install OSX on my external. I hear this is a bad idea too because that is where I keep my media. Apparently you should not cut video with your capture media and your OS on the same drive because they are accessed at different speeds.

Here is my question. Which option is the lesser of two evils? Is it better to boot from a flash drive or boot from the same drive as captured media?

 

[spinnerlys]

Hey Guys,

I have been running OSX on both partitions of a dual partitioned drive for some time now. I need to do this because I run both Avid and Final Cut. Avid hates when you update your system and Final Cut hates when you don't update your system. I keep all my media on an external and both partitions use it for storage. The solution I have works great, except I'm running out of storage space on my internal drive.

I'd like to move the Avid partition out to a USB drive and boot from that for the rare times I use Avid. I'd still keep my media on an external and use my internal drive for the primary boot (my final cut system). I hear this would be a horribly slow option though as a flash drive is not quite fast enough for a boot option.

My alternative is install OSX on my external. I hear this is a bad idea too because that is where I keep my media. Apparently you should not cut video with your capture media and your OS on the same drive because they are accessed at different speeds.

Here is my question. Which option is the lesser of two evils? Is it better to boot from a flash drive or boot from the same drive as captured media?

The lesser evil is using the external HDD, as it provides more speed (up to 65/75 MB/s if FW800) than a USB flash memory stick (10, maybe 5 MB/s).

 

[SDAVE]

I hear this is a bad idea too because that is where I keep my media. Apparently you should not cut video with your capture media and your OS on the same drive because they are accessed at different speeds.

Nowadays it shouldn't be a problem.

Go for it.

UNLESS you're doing uncompressed HD, which I don't see you doing as FW800 will not support uncompressed HD.

Another option would be to use a second FW800 drive and daisy chain it to your video drive (If you're using FW that is).

Also don't forget that OS X will need to access the page file, so keep that in mind.