TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Production Studio
-- Reformatting my mac......
Pages (2): « 1 [2]

Carbon Copy can be used to back up / copy anything you want. Doesn't have to be your whole drive.

It can dump anything you want into a drive image if you want. Makes it easier to keep your backups organized.

Check it out, it's really nice software, and free.

quote:

Originally posted by hexadecimal Carbon Copy can be used to back up / copy anything you want. Doesn't have to be your whole drive. It can dump anything you want into a drive image if you want. Makes it easier to keep your backups organized. Check it out, it's really nice software, and free.

Actually, this looks really great. Thanks for the tip....

Will let you know how it goes and maybe post a tutorial once I;ve done it for other mac owners.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN So from your post Cryogen, I understand the Timemachine drive needs to be dedicated and can only host that alone?

Not at all. It's just that Time Machine demands the drive be formatted to HFS+. You can still drop files onto it like any other drive.

You can also select folders that Time Machine doesn't back up if you don't want to copy the whole OS.

quote:

Originally posted by beniii Not good at all for producing... it is a lot slower and the like. p.s. they are called virtual machines.

I just want to make a correction on a previous statement.

I relayed what you said back to my brother (the computer engineer who recommended using VMs) and he drew out a diagram to explain how they work.
He also showed me the 6 VMs on his computer, and the windows tasks bar to prove how CPU usage is divided.

He said the only things VMs (virtual machines) share is harddrive space, however much you allot to each machine. If I allot 40gigs to one VM, the other VM can't touch it. However, RAM and CPU power is only used as a sum total between what programs simultaneously run on each VM.

If I have FL running on one VM, and FL running on another VM, then CPU usage is spit depending by what is running on each VM and added.

That means it should NOT be any slower at all UNLESS you are running other programs at that same time. Which should go w/out saying. But if that is not the scenario, you get the same amount of CPU power by only booting 1 VM.

Now the *benefit* to having a VM.
If you surf the internet a lot, or download random crap from random places you are exposed to a lot of shit.
That shit will slow down you computer over time.

When you have a VM (for people who can't afford 2 seperate computers) if one slows down over time from spyware/installing/uninstalling a VM that is used just for music production will NOT. You can simply delete the VM, and reboot a 3rd that you built but never used.

It would keep the VM that you use running at optimum speed as long as you never go online (which is what I'll be doing). So I had him install 3 VMs on my one pc. One I will use for internet one for just music production, then a 3rd I never boot till the internet one gets raped with spyware/virus's.

I've owned everycopy of the most popular AV programs and can NEVER stop my internet pc from slowing down. So this will be a least interesting to try.
If not he can just delete both VM not a big deal. But I'll let you know how it goes. Also I've never seen this topic on this forum before.

Robby... so your brother tells you it works, so it HAS too...

Ive been in IT for around 6-7 i have used MANY virtual machines.

Fire up fruity loops on a VM, report back with how it goes.

EDIT: If you did want to run your theory do it this way.

There is a tool called "snapshotting" you take a snapshot, and then at any time, you can roll back to that point, so if it gets raped by spyware, snapshot, BAM done.

Tell your brother to go back to the textbook.

quote:

Originally posted by beniii Robby... so your brother tells you it works, so it HAS too... Ive been in IT for around 6-7 i have used MANY virtual machines. Fire up fruity loops on a VM, report back with how it goes. EDIT: If you did want to run your theory do it this way. There is a tool called "snapshotting" you take a snapshot, and then at any time, you can roll back to that point, so if it gets raped by spyware, snapshot, BAM done. Tell your brother to go back to the textbook.

My brothers been in computer engineering for over 25 years.
And look I don't want to argue there is no logical arguement for how a VM would use MORE cpu cycles when only 1 VM is booted.

If you can explain to me where those extra CPU cycles are going, then I'd tend to believe you. Otherwise, I guess I'll have to delete the VMs, its not a big deal.
You just failed to inform me of where these extra cycles are going, when I told by an expert its the same.

Forgive me for deciding on the better explanation.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox My brothers been in computer engineering for over 25 years. And look I don't want to argue there is no logical arguement for how a VM would use MORE cpu cycles when only 1 VM is booted. If you can explain to me where those extra CPU cycles are going, then I'd tend to believe you. Otherwise, I guess I'll have to delete the VMs, its not a big deal. You just failed to inform me of where these extra cycles are going, when I told by an expert its the same. Forgive me for deciding on the better explanation.

oK robby, look forward to your thread about how it didnt work shortly.

quote:

Originally posted by beniii oK robby, look forward to your thread about how it didnt work shortly.

Yeh but if you can't prove where those extra cycles go, possibly you can hypothesize?

If not then yes, hopefully (for you) it won't work (for me). Thanks.

Why do you need to know the specifics?

You are emulating a Operating system, an another Operating system.

Its naturally going to be slower... But it could be usuable to a point (keeping in mind your going to loose cycles and RAM)


For you with your IT knowledge (or knowledge in general) i really dont think its the right thing to do.

If i was you, i would learn how to optimise my system, and how to back it up properly.

That way if it stuffs up, you can just restore it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoHky0gpsjg

Robby, the problems wth VM's are the same with multiple partions; the drive they run off and the chain of processing they rely on

Unfortunately, even on regularly defragmented drives the data is split over several areas on the drive and OS, even in VM land, is placed on several different places.

This means that essentially the drive will have to search for two places at once when trying to access any data and the OS (which is all the time). As you should know, the computer is only as fat as the weakest link in the chain meaning that the bottleneck will slow the DAW down a an unusble speed.

You have to realise that IT people know nothing (and I mean it) about audio apart from whwre to plug in the 3.5mm audio jack to their laptop.

Audio(along with video) happens to be the single most intensive use of a computer so you can't cut corners when it comes to these matters - dedicated, non partitioned drives are a must, and partitions and VM's are a solid non-no.

EDIT; Just saw Eric J's excellent post in the dedicated thread to this subject so ignore mine.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN Robby, the problems wth VM's are the same with multiple partions; the drive they run off and the chain of processing they rely on Unfortunately, even on regularly defragmented drives the data is split over several areas on the drive and OS, even in VM land, is placed on several different places. This means that essentially the drive will have to search for two places at once when trying to access any data and the OS (which is all the time). As you should know, the computer is only as fat as the weakest link in the chain meaning that the bottleneck will slow the DAW down a an unusble speed. You have to realise that IT people know nothing (and I mean it) about audio apart from whwre to plug in the 3.5mm audio jack to their laptop. Audio(along with video) happens to be the single most intensive use of a computer so you can't cut corners when it comes to these matters - dedicated, non partitioned drives are a must, and partitions and VM's are a solid non-no.

Thanks for the advice but I posted something in the other thread to further clarify what I'm about to ask.

You said the "chain of processing" they rely on. With a VM the VM is processing through the host, not directly to the hardware. (this is what I was told and noone clarified in opposition) So if the VM is not open, the host is taking direct and full allocation of the processor, but not the harddrive.

Are you saying the VM is chained directly to the hardware? Isn't that the only way it would impact the CPU? When the VM is not booted, I just can't logically see how the native is being impacted CPU wise.
If you're saying it is I believe you, but if you don't mind explaining I am very curious.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox You said the "chain of processing" they rely on. With a VM the VM is processing through the host, not directly to the hardware. (this is what I was told and noone clarified in opposition) So if the VM is not open, the host is taking direct and full allocation of the processor, but not the harddrive.

This is true for non-hypervisor VM host softwre. Software like Virtual PC and VMWare Fusion operate like this. Hypervisor enabled software such as Windows Hyper-V allows virtual machines to talk directly to the hardware but only if the processor in the physical machine supports it. This is possible because the host operating system itself becomes just another virtual machine. You must install a special OS to use Hyper-V because it is setup differently than your typical workstation OS such as Windows XP. Currently only Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and Windows 7 Enterprise support Hyper-V on the Microsoft side.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox Are you saying the VM is chained directly to the hardware? Isn't that the only way it would impact the CPU? When the VM is not booted, I just can't logically see how the native is being impacted CPU wise. If you're saying it is I believe you, but if you don't mind explaining I am very curious.

The "chain of processing" he is referring to is where the VM must go through the host OS to gain access to any physical resources. So if the VM requests a task to be executed on the processor, it must ask the host OS to execute the task. Then the host OS actually talks to the physical processor. The physical processor executes the task then sends the result back to the host OS, which then passes it on to the virtual machine.

This creates double the amount of overhead for the VM to process any type of work, which slows down the VM and the host. The VM is slower because it requires twice as much work to execute the same task as the host OS. The host OS is slowed because it must manage this communication between the VM and the physical machine.

Hypervisor mitigates this a great deal by allowing the VM to talk directly to the hardware, thereby making the VM and the host faster. The VM talks directly to the hardware and the host OS does not have to manage communications between the two.

If the VM is not booted, then there is no overhead except in the case of VM host software that runs as a service.

Wow this is a lot to take in, it all makes sense though so thanks Eric.
It looks like as long as its not run as a service I'll be fine.

I came into this thread thinking VMs were a good idea.
I was quickly advised it was a bad idea.
And now once again it seems like its a good idea.

I do appreciate everything really, but at this point I think I have to just try and find out, after making sure its not being run as a service of course. Thanks once again!

To put it all in perspective, LaidBack Luke uses FL Studio On mac using Paralells.

quote:

Originally posted by beniii To put it all in perspective, LaidBack Luke uses FL Studio On mac using Paralells.

I use Parallels on my MacBook Pro and it runs decently enough. If I fire up a couple of copies of Visual Studio and Photoshop it'll slow down a fair bit, but thats more a symptom of the available resources in the MacBook Pro. If you have a decently fast enough host, it'll run like a champ. I used VMWare Fusion on my Mac Pro for a while, but eventually installed a 3rd hard disk and a native Windows XP installation using Boot Camp. That thing runs circles around most of the other computers I have used. Windows XP on dual, dual-core XEON processors is crazy fast. I generally keep it very clean and use it only for a Microsoft Development Environment and the isolated game or two.

I just dragged (copy) the music folder over to a external disk. Then reformated to a clean shit and dragged it bacl. All my other shit is on DVDs (pics+docs etc), better or easier than that, it cant be. Btw reason for reformat wasnt any trouble but id been fucking with icons, docking and lots of terminal commands, deleting lots of progs, which i wanted back to default and a lot of other shit. it never crashed or got slow anyway i just wanted it back to default, didnt take long at all. This time im not touching much as I know how i want it.

quote:

Originally posted by palm I just dragged (copy) the music folder over to a external disk. Then reformated to a clean shit and dragged it bacl. All my other shit is on DVDs (pics+docs etc), better or easier than that, it cant be. Btw reason for reformat wasnt any trouble but id been fucking with icons, docking and lots of terminal commands, deleting lots of progs, which i wanted back to default and a lot of other shit. it never crashed or got slow anyway i just wanted it back to default, didnt take long at all. This time im not touching much as I know how i want it.

That's exactly why I want to do it - it's my first mac (apart from using them at work for several years) so I pushed it as far as I could and installed a ton of programs to get to know the platform.

Now I know exactly what I want on it so time to start from fresh.....

arrange all the documents you need and copy them over. im sure their only in your users "music", "documents", "pics" folder anyway so it should be pretty easy. love to organize files for easier backup.

quote:

Originally posted by palm arrange all the documents you need and copy them over. im sure their only in your users "music", "documents", "pics" folder anyway so it should be pretty easy. love to organize files for easier backup.

I was thinking that but I have serious docs on this computer (my visa stuff, the files for the business we're opening, etc.). It's more than just annoying personal loss if it goes wrong.

I think I'm going to spend a few hours finding everything that I could possibly want and use timemachine or carboncopy to migrate the files. Then I'll probably go to DVD as well for the really critical stuff.

Thanks for your help everyone!!

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN That's exactly why I want to do it - it's my first mac (apart from using them at work for several years) so I pushed it as far as I could and installed a ton of programs to get to know the platform. Now I know exactly what I want on it so time to start from fresh.....

Than you didn't read my post at the beginning of the thread. If you copy your entire USER folder into an external drive, it will copy all your files except your applications & preferences. Once they're done copying into the external, double check everything is there just to be on the safe side. If it is, than erase your computer just like Lolo described it right below my post.

quote:

Originally posted by DjWoody Than you didn't read my post at the beginning of the thread. If you copy your entire USER folder into an external drive, it will copy all your files except your applications & preferences. Once they're done copying into the external, double check everything is there just to be on the safe side. If it is, than erase your computer just like Lolo described it right below my post.

I did read it and thta's why I brought it up again later in the thread but no-one else suggested it and you didn't comment further so wasn't sure if it would really work like that. Thanks again for the info Woody

Does it do everything? and by that I mean all of them, the scanner output folder, the default downloads folder, etc.?

I'm just being really OTT cautious as if I lose any of the important shit, it'll be time to chuck myself off a building.

It should.

You can tell by actually opening the user folder and see what's in it. You will notice that it also copies your desktop exactly how it is. If you get info on your user folder, you will see that it's almost as big as your HD. Well, given you only have one user and you didn't installed any apps that take up like 50 Gigs.

Don't erase your iMac until you verify everything you need is on your external. That is something I highly recommend no matter what method you choose.

Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.