PT10 and PT11 side by side over HD3

[s9dd]

Hi Folks

I have a nice i7 3,4Ghz Win7x64 16GB 5Tb system with HD3 PCI-X cards which works well, augmented by Waves, Avid, and other plugins. I also have RME FF800 ASIO firewire connected.

I am toying with side by side v11 of PT, and want to understand any dangers, since I am more than happy with 10.3.8, barring some annoying bugs! Last thing I need would be a broken v10 system.

I get that I lose TDM plugins, and gain AAX plugins. Guessing performance will depend far more on crucial processor settings and tweaks...

Anything else?

[YYR123]

The program can access more than 4gb of memory - thus performance increases / plugin dynamic processing (or whatever they call it) a plugin won't be using CPU cycles while not pushing audio thru it

Offline bounce

[albee1952]

Cover your ASSets by using drive imaging

[mesaone]

For many of us, video is practically unusable with Pro Tools 11. If you work in post or any other sound for picture, you'll want to keep PT10 around.

[albee1952]

For me, its been easier to use separate system drives for 10 and 11(after some co-install woes). Easy for me as all my drives are in SATA drive cages for fast swapping(but a dual-boot setup can also be a good alternative).

[s9dd]

Makes me nervous, considering it could die spectacularly by the sounds of it.

As it happens, I do have a spare system drive to hand (a 1Tb drive), but the thought of rebuilding this PC from scratch is not at all welcome. Unless someone knows how to clone the existing C: drive easily onto that new drive? My tech skills are good, but I have never done that - must be some s/w out there that does a backup/restore function to a second drive? Hoping! Suggestions?

Perhaps... it'd be best to start building a second PC with HDX ready board, and network it. HDX is the plan, but after a few projects, and not until about 2016... The bleeding edge is not for me if I can avoid it.

Intersting point on video - but I don't need video at this stage of the game, strictly pro-audio here. That said, I have Sony Vegas 12 installed, so I'd probably shift across to that and offer up chunks of pre-mixed audio if I had to to work with film.

[mesaone]

Originally Posted by s9dd

must be some s/w out there that does a backup/restore function to a second drive? Hoping! Suggestions?

Acronis True Image seems to be easy to use. There's even a free version for Western Digital hard drives.

I personally use DriveImg XML for backups, but apparently it doesn't create a Master Boot Record... So using it to clone a drive would require a bit more work.

[albee1952]

Acronis will work fine, as long as you figure it out I've used it for years, and while its saved my tail numerous times, I still manage to screw things up from time to time. I use it to clone a good-working system drive(so I have a backup drive ready to go, all the time), and I use it to image the system drive BEFORE I install ANY new software or update. As for it NOT copying the boot sector, that is a user error(and I have made it more than once), but, pop in your Win7 installer and run the REPAIR function, and all is well in minutes

Using Acronis 2011 here, and after having SOME images show as invalid, now I take the extra time to validate them(newer versions may be fine). Personally, besides having a clone of my current system drive, I also have a backup with an older version of PT, and I keep 2 large USB drives that hold nothing but drive images of every computer I own(doing a restore from an image is a great way to recover from a virus attack)

[mesaone]

Originally Posted by albee1952

As for it NOT copying the boot sector, that is a user error

I was referring to DriveImg XML when I mentioned not copying over the Master Boot Record. It's not user error, the utility actually cannot do it.