Configuring A Workhorse, Separate user account for Logic? Options

[KingBarbarossa]

Hello everyone,

My question to all you tech wizards:
My computer G5 dual is being used really heavily for graphic design, communication of all sorts and... well, of course music.

I am encountering often many problems when I start Logic. Often configurations seem to be not remembered correctly, audio or midi has to be re-configured - almost every single time when I want to start any work in Logic. This is frustrating and time consuming. These things occur randomly and can never be tracked down or repeated for proper troubleshooting. (I am running numerous hardware synths, as well as plugins and a Kontakt2 in addition to Logic., I also use an Emagic mt4 midi-interface and a Presonus Firebox)

My plan is to get a new Mac Pro in a few months to move all the music production over to a seperate machine.
But in the interim, to reduce some of the problems or at least stabilize the work environment I thought it might be advantagous to make a seperate user for the music production. This way the machine could be booted without all the fonts and extra drivers etc. which are needed for graphics applications.


So my questions are:

Does it makes sense (and to what extent and why) to maybe use an extra harddrive to put the music apps on? maybe even a complete additional system installation on an extra drive?
Does separating out the music apps to a different user account on the computer help at all - will it be beneficial in attempt to gain stability for Logic etc., free system memory or even speed up certain things?
If this is advisable, how do I get a third internal harddrive into my G5 dual (i already use an external for sample libraries)?

What is your advice, how would you solve this?

[lepetitmartien]

If a plug-in is not behaving 100% clear and it passes the validation, you're up for troubles, as it's easy to test, it should be one of the first to do. The fact you don't use it doesn't mean it will not interact in some way with Logic…

Journalling is a feature not something to bother you (it's less intrusive even with tiger too) and the likes of Digidesign to name some have now switch the advice against journalling to journalling on. I care about the system drive, anyway you should NOT have your samples there, it's a very bad idea.

As long as you keep you working files on another drive than the system one, fragmenting is way less an issue, especially as to care about it is very easy (copying, formating, copying back). The optimizing obsession is an old classic habit, you can gain to some extent but the file system and OS X cure most of the issues as long as you keep the files you're working on elsewhere. this way it won't be the system drive the cluttered "slow" one.

Keep us updated when you come back

[KingBarbarossa]

...

Keep us updated when you come back

Well, I am back and finally things are working.

However, I do have the feeling that defragmenting helped quite a bit, I also turned off the file journaling.
I am still doing everything under one user and I exchanged the Emagic mt4 MIDI interface with a MOTU midi express.

The Presonus Firebox works now too. I had to find out that it is impossible to use an external Firewire harddrive at the same time as the Firebox unless you chain it to the Firebox. Now I chained it but I had to sacrifice all possible benefits (if there were any) of the new Firewire 800 port which my harddrive was equipped with.

Anyway, it seems the Presonus works actually better now than before when I was not using an external drive at all. Maybe the external drive is tickling it by being daisy-chained to it so it does not loose sync as much as it did...?

Anyway, things are working smoother now except my Moog which is back in the factory for the 4th time... but this is a different story...

Back to making music.
Thanks for all advice and considerations.