i’m in the beginning of transitioning to using legit software, which i of course want to keep separate from sister site.
for simplicities sake, and since i can’t afford a 2nd computer, i got an external ssd to install OS and boot from, and wanted to use this for legit software only. in essence, wanted to treat these as 2 separate computers (with the exception of course that i can only access one at a time)

i never had 2 bootable drives before, and now that i finished OS install on 2nd drive, i’m very surprised i could access all my files, from my 1st drive, when booted into the 2nd? i did not think i would be able to access these, as if it was a “normal” external drive.
so not sure if this is normal with any drive plugged into any computer, or if this is only the case, because both drives had the OS installed from same computer, or something? (i need to change main boot drive in preferences)

but mainly, is this a reason to worry when doing legit installs? will the 1st drive be scanned when i install something on the 2nd, or will only the drive i’m booted into be scanned?
my main goal with all of this is only for legit software to not see anything from sister site.
will this work?

if anybody has anything else to keep in mind with this approach, it is also appreciated

 

You are creating a headache for yourself imo. There is no reason to care if your legit software "sees" other contents. What you care about, is it not being able to tell anyone about it. Install a software firewall like Little Snitch, or LuLu (free).

You are going to want your legit plugins to work in either scenario. You may have to install each one, into both locations. That will get old, quickly.

 

thank you for the reply. you might be right, in that i am creating myself an unnecessary headache lol.
to clarify, i always used little snitch on my 1st drive (with mostly software from sister site). however, i thought this would not be needed for the 2nd/"legit" drive. doesn't most software need internet access just for activation, or even installations through hubs/portals? i figured, inevitably, they will have to "talk" back home, so i would have to grant access in little snitch anyway? so i'm confused about this, or i'm not sure i got what you mean

 

you should always have a firewall on an internet connected computer. There is little, to no point in what you want to do. You are going to waste gigs of storage space for the second MacOS installation. You are going to be running your OS from a drive with a cable between it and the computer. You really do not want to do this. It's a recipe for latency. What do you even think is the upside to doing what you are trying?

 

the upside for me is the separation. doing paid work with for example RX elements (legit), while not loosing old projects using RX advance (sister site). working on songs to release in S1 artist (legit), while not loosing my projects in S1 pro (sister site), etc. etc.
additionally, my "1st" drive i keep referring to, is also an external SSD. i have a late 2012 imac, and the internal drive failed a long time ago. i've been using a bootable external SSD ever since. the speed actually drastically increased for me, coming from the old imac internal HDD. not to mention, this is something plenty do to "upgrade" their old imacs, even with functioning working internal HDDs, so running from an external is not something i'm worried about for now

 

that makes sense. So what other concerns do you have about it? That your S1 plugin manager will scan the other drive and try to add your Sister Site plugins to your menu? Obviously you are going to have to do separate installs of RX9, and other standalone versions where a .app gets put into your applications folder.

 

i think my concern is only based on ignorance, as in, not knowing how this setup fully works, how installations "in the background" generally work, etc.
i expected to not at all have access to one drive, while being booted in the other. i'm more wondering in general, if when installing RX elements, the install would "see" RX advance authorized to something else, etc (using RX as an example, but could be anything really, considering i don't know exactly what to look for/how this part of it works)

 

If you did this, in general you would be able to see the "other" drive (meaning whichever you aren't booted into), but you could hide it if you like (not necessary tho for what you've describe as your intentions here), the apps, lets say rx legit wouldn't know that you had rx k'd on the other drive as long as you don't add the other drive to your plugins directory in S1 and vice versa.

I've had multi boot systems and even hackintoshes for years and haven't bothered with Little Snitch and the like in ages.

So to answer your initial question yes this is do able, I don't think you'd have anything to worry about, but you may be overthinking it. If it were me at this point and I wanted to separate legit and k'd sessions I'd do just that in terms of keeping the project files in different directories. Like have a folder with legit projects and a folder with all other projects.

 

Last edited: Apr 30, 2022

@juggz143 thank you for the input also! yeah, i would never point in a way from one drive to the other, maybe something happens with icloud? but absolutely not link from one drive to the plugin folder of the other. this post was mainly to make sure nothing involuntary happens :D
thank you for confirming it should not be the case, and that accessing the "other" drive is normal behavior