Partitioning SSD Drives with multiple boot OS

[Dopamine]

Hi guys,

Is it possible to install an internal SSD drive and partition it so one boots in Mountain Lion (running PT 10) and the other boots in El Capitian (running PT 12)?

Anyone doing this? Is there a recommended brand or spec to look for these days? Thanks!

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by Dopamine

Hi guys,

Is it possible to install an internal SSD drive and partition it so one boots in Mountain Lion (running PT 10) and the other boots in El Capitian (running PT 12)?

Anyone doing this? Is there a recommended brand or spec to look for these days? Thanks!

Yes, possible and works. But expect to get responses saying to not do it.

Personally, I did about 1.5 years ago and everything's been perfectly fine.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Dopamine

Hi guys,

Is it possible to install an internal SSD drive and partition it so one boots in Mountain Lion (running PT 10) and the other boots in El Capitian (running PT 12)?

Anyone doing this? Is there a recommended brand or spec to look for these days? Thanks!

You could partition but why El Crapitan? That's been a disaster for PT and other audio apps.

[Ben Jenssen]

Been doing it for years. I stopped counting.
In my opinion, the advantages of keeping PT on a separate boot partition can't be overstated. It's the only way to treat the primadonna software that she is.

And with SSD I can change from one to the other in about one minute.
I made a simple applescript to switch with one click.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Drew Mazurek

Yes, possible and works. But expect to get responses saying to not do it.

Why would people say not to do that? Like any drive they are designed to partition, and installing multiple boot partitions is a perfect reason to partition any drive. OS X Disk Utility is all you need.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Dopamine

Hi guys,

Is it possible to install an internal SSD drive and partition it so one boots in Mountain Lion (running PT 10) and the other boots in El Capitian (running PT 12)?

Anyone doing this? Is there a recommended brand or spec to look for these days? Thanks!

What exact computer do you have?

There are many hundreds of posts recommending SSDs on DUC already that you can search for.

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Why would people say not to do that? Like any drive they are designed to partition, and installing multiple boot partitions is a perfect reason to partition any drive. OS X Disk Utility is all you need.

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t...ight=partition

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Drew Mazurek

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t...ight=partition

Oh look at all the time I saved by not seeing that thread before

Unfortunately much of the stuff there reflects a misunderstanding of how SSDs actually work. There is not a simple direct mapping of partitions to NAND chips. That logical mapping is very dynamic done in the SSD controller/firmware. As for "performance tests" proving anything here I will see it when I believe it, of several SSD performance tests claimed by folks on DUC thatI have looked at so far not one of them actually measured what the folks talking about them though they did... esp. being skewed by file system caching effects. And sustained write (and maybe other) performance tests here as well need to be sure the disk is reset to simmilar state between tests. Running a test, partitioning the drive and rerunning it for example may be biased against the later test (because the drive overall has less free pages available to quickly write to) especially if TRIM is not enabled.

So if you want to have multiple boot partitions on an SSD sure go do it. If you just want to partition up an SSD for "uh I don't know reasons" then don't--you are likely just making things more complex than needed. If some random idiot recommended you partition up an SSD to *increase* performance, just no, wrong info.

[albee1952]

You might consider using several smaller SSD's instead of partitioning a larger one(unless its a drag swapping drives).

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by albee1952

You might consider using several smaller SSD's instead of partitioning a larger one(unless its a drag swapping drives).

Why? And actually if you go to really small (say 128GB/256GB) SSD you do start to run into issues where the NAND chip fanout in the drive limits performance .