What goes where? Disk allocation issue...

[Artaxiad]

Here's the deal:

Just bought a new Maxtor Onetouch II 300GB external harddisk. I have a 160GB internal drive from before, where basically everything is stored now.

The problem: What goes where?

I've heard that it's faster if ProTools and the audio files are on separate drives. Let's say I do that. Will moving the already existing PTLE projects from the internal to the external drive be a hassle? And where should I put other stuff, like plug-ins, soft-synths etc?

Another thing I've heard is that it can be a good idea to have a separate boot with a stripped-down OS for audio work. My internal hard disk is in one partition, though, and I would like to avoid reformatting it if that's possible. Is a separate boot on the external drive a bad idea? Or just pointless?

I think that's it for now. Any and all help appreciated.

Art

[Aussie Scott]

All your software should live on the system drive - so PT, plugins etc
Save your sessions and all relevant data (ie. audio) onto the external drive.

You shouldn't have to totally reformat to get a second partition on the system drive. I wouldn't put the second boot on the external drive as then both OS and audio would be going to the one drive. Some one way more knowledgeable than me could talk you thru this better, but there is partitioning software around that will help you set that up without a total reformat. Sorry I can't help you more than that, but it is a good idea - keep looking into it. The second boot enables you to agressively configure the machine from both a hardware and software point of view. Way better than just setting up a hardware profile via control panel.

The experts will no doubt chime in soon

Cheers, Scott

[Artaxiad]

Thank you, Aussie! That's a lot of help already. I'll wait and see what the experts have to say on the other questions.

Art