So you’ve upgraded to the latest Mac OSX or Windows 7 version, and suddenly Pro Tools just ain’t working any more. Ouch. It’s a neverending saga; Apple or Microsoft change their OS’s underpinnings, thus breaking key components of pro applications like Avid Pro Tools.
Now you’re stuck either A) waiting for an update to Pro Tools and/or B) wiping your whole boot hard drive and starting over again with the older OS. What a pain!
Your best solution: multiple boot partitions. A quick aside: I’m a decades-long Mac user, and have extensive experience as a computer support technician and network engineer, and I speak from experience when I say that you’re best off running Pro Tools on a Mac. So this topic and future topics will typically be Mac-oriented. All the Pro Tools-specific info will be cross-platform, but most computer-specific info will be Mac. More specifically, we’ll be talking Intel Mac since PPC Macs are now relegated to history (Pro Tools 8.0.3 doesn’t even support PPC Macs anymore 🙁 )
That said, you’re best off creating multiple boot partitions on your Mac as part of your initial Mac OS installation. When booted from your latest Mac OSX DVD, there’s a menu option for Disk Utility, the program that allows you to partition volumes. Run that first and create a few boot partitions of at least 15 to 20 GB each that are formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and using the GUID Partition Table for the entire physical drive. Any remaining drive space can either be integrated into the two partitions or used for a third partition for other data needs.
Now you can go ahead and install multiple instances of Mac OSX (one on each partition), even multiple versions if you like. For instance, you could put Mac OSX 10.5 on one partition and Mac OSX 10.6 on another. The point of this is to allow you to have multiple versions of Pro Tools installed on a single computer, and be able to easily switch between them.
Why might I need multiple versions of Pro Tools? Here’s a few reasons:
– operator preference. Different people working on a given system might simply be more comfortable with different versions.
– plugin compatibility. You may need to run certain plugins for a job that only work on an older version of Pro Tools.
– system reliability. They say that the Devil you know is better than the Devil you don’t. That latest version of Pro Tools might offer some new features, but it might also have some new bugs. At least the version you’re been using is something you’re familiar with. When time is money, it’s best not to be experimenting with new software versions.
– OMFs and AAFs. I routinely am presented with an OMF or AAF that only opens in Pro Tools 7 or only opens in Pro Tools 8. If I didn’t have both available to me, there would be certain OMFs that I would not be able to open. Talk about a show-stopper!
– Quick recovery to a known-good version of Mac OSX and Pro Tools after an update goes bad. You can make disk images of your functional boot volumes using programs like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper as backups. If you then install an update that trashes your Pro Tools installation, you can simply boot to your alternate partition and restore the problematic partition from your backup image. Let’s face it: there will be future updates that go bad. It’s a fact. You want to be prepared.
The list of benefits goes on, but these are a few big ones. So when your livelihood depends on software, giving yourself options in the form of multiple boot partitions is a smart way to go!