Hi there,

Spoiler: original issue

I'm beginning to plan building a dedicated audio pc. Since latency is my top priority I understand that I should keep my OS (in my case it will be windows) as clean as possible.

Since naturally this computer will be kind of expensive it would still be nice to be able to use it for things like programming, maybe a little bit of gaming and so on. But this would then convolute the OS again...

How would/do you deal with this?
It would be awesome if there was an option to easily switch in/out the ssd with the OS on it, but that would be too uncofortable for daily use. Right now I can only think of using a VM inside a clean windows and doing everything else but audio-stuff in there. But having a full-blown OS that I really use a lot inside a VM somehow feels wrong... and would I lose performance this way?

Another question I just stumbled upon:
Is there a way to completely restrict access to a particular partition for some of the os's?
The problem at hand is that I would like to use the audio-os without antivirus (for latency reasons) and I would like to prevent any possible viruses from spreading over the other os's...

 

Last edited: Sep 3, 2020

Maybe you should put 'OS drive' in the title?
With an audio pc, it is best to have an external HDD as a scratch disc for recording audio to.
And to keep sound libraries external too. I have my daw projects on an external, so that all audio is not on my OS drive.
It's even possible to offload audio plugins to another drive, using Symbolic Links.

Perhaps you could make a bootable clone, and you can modify the clone. You can just have a naked drive plugged in.
With a VM, be aware that firstly your main OS has to have ram, and then the OS in the VM will need ram too.
You can allocate the ram between the two, but remember that you can't take too much away from the main OS, the source!

 

Why not a multiboot system separated on different drives ?
One audio-only OS on SSD that you keep clean.
One multitask OS on another drive, SSD or not.
And then you'll can choose at boot time which OS you wanna use. If you wanna switch between the 2, you just have to restart to pc and choose the other one.

 

Did u even read what I already wrote?

 

Yeah, sorry, I was a little distracted by some other "comments" in another thread happening at the same time and I was not clear as I should be here. Sorry about that.

All I wanted to say is that it doesn't need to be a clone. You can have a win7 or win10 for audio-only (or whatever OS you prefer/need) + another OS for non-audio stuff (*nix OS or whatever you prefer again). So you can combine the good points of different OS related to the way you'll use them.

On my side, I'm using a win7 install for (mostly) audio, a win10 install for video editing, and an ubuntu one for (mostly) coding. The 2 windows installs are on the same drive, divided in 2 partitions. the Ubuntu one on another drive. Like Smoove Grooves, my projects are on a 3rd drive (external), and I have a 4th one (external too) for my virtual instruments library.

 

Last edited: Aug 14, 2020

Thanks a lot for the replies and sorry for coming back on this so late. There were too many other things going on lately...

The multiple partitions and os's option somehow did not occur to me but it makes so much more sense, thanks again. I think I might eventually go with a windows partition for audio and an ubuntu one for programming

Also having external drives for the libraries and maybe vsts (if thats speedy enough) is fantastic advice

 

Another question I just stumbled upon:

Is there a way to completely restrict access to a particular partition for some of the os's?

The problem at hand is that I would like to use the audio-os without antivirus (for latency reasons) and I would like to prevent any possible viruses from spreading over the other os's...

 

Heh. Vanilla or any windows 10 running in VM is sort of a nightmare lol. Unless you have the beastiest beast of a machine, games will suck. Linux is much better at this but this is not the main solution. VM for windows is mostly to check software and Windows 10 latest versions give you the ability to create a VM-like sandbox and check software without risk. But forgive me for straying away.
Grab yourself a cheap ssd (or better lol), install win and dual boot. It is the best solution as most peeps said.
To answer the question at hand, yes you can restrict an OS from accessing any or all other drives that exist within your comp. How to do this ?
In Win10 you right click the start menu button and select Disk Management. If you have modified the start menu to behave like Win7 or 8 with any of the known apps, just do it the traditional way, you go to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management. Now you can see all the drives in your pc in order. Any drive you want hidden from the current os, you right click it, select "Change drive letter and path" and at the window appearing next, select Remove (button near the low right corner). Repeat this, until you have visible only the drives you want the current OS accessing and you 're done. In any case you want to grab a file from any of those removed drives you can easily reverse this in the same manner and re-remove it afterwards, np.
Now i wanted to comment on the removable drive. You can have a hot swap disk bay that mounts in front of a computer case in the place of where an optical drive would be. These bays are connected internally with normal sata cables at sata ports and the better ones have a door that slides open with a button click and you can insert or unmount any normal ssd or hdd depending on the model you purchase. This for instance can hold two 2.5" hdds or ssds. As you can see it mounts in an optical drive's place:


I have two such bays in my main comp, one for 2 x 2.5" and one for a normal 3.5" hdd, only my drives are not bootable, but nothing keeps you from having a bootable-hot swappable drive that you can put and take out anytime. The cost of such a bay is about 15-20 euros. I would avoid the cheaper models, the ones without a front loading door, because the door keeps your drive(s) firmly connected and doesn't interupt aesthetically as well.
Cheers

 

the os and any smart virus will still see partitions, even without a drive letter. and their mbrs.
i used a bootmanager called vamos for xp which could actually hide partitions, but doesnt work for the newer osses.
what you need is a bootmanager called bootus or boot-us. there is a free demo, but2 the "true hide feature is only available in the pro version.