Dual boot, possibly from external drive -- multiple questions

I'll try to keep this as short as possible, but I have a number of questions:

Background: About four months ago I laid splurged and purchased myself a new system designed specifically for video editing. Very briefly, the specs are as follows: ASUS P5WDH delux, Intel Core2Duo E6400, 2GB RAM, 2X WD 250GB HDs (one system, one for media), GeForce 7300... I have probably forgotten something, but suffice to say that within the budget I could affort this machine was fantastic. I am running Premiere Pro 2.0 for video editing, along with After Effects, Encore DVD, and some other video software.

When this was a brand new install it was incredible. Editing was like a dream -- everything in real time, no crashes... perfect. Unfortunately, I don't have the space or cash to dedicate this machine entirely to editing. Instead it has all sorts of MS Office apps for my wife, internet downloads and games from my kids, etc. etc. Four months later and it is still pretty good, but editing is becomming noticably slower. This even with regular scans, ccleaner and more.

So, what I am considering now is making this a dual-boot XP install. One dedicated entirely to my video editing apps and the other to all the rest of the kids and wife's apps.

My questions are at several levels:

1. Will this actually help? To the best of my understanding it should be the next best thing to a dedicated machine, but I need to know whether this will do the trick for me.

2. What is the best method? I really don't want to have to remove and reinstall everything that is already on the machine, and for a couple of reasons don't want to put in another internal drive, so should I:

i. Partition my current system drive (if so, what tool is best for doing this) and put the new bootable XP on it,
ii. Set up an e-SATA external drive (if so, how to do this please?)
iii. Can I use an external USB or Firewire drive for a second XP boot?

3. Finally, once I decide what to do, HOW do I set it up? I'm quite comfortable with editing my registry, etc., but I'm far from being a computer God. I definitely need some guidance or at least to be pointed in the right direction before I start going down this route.

OK, that is it for now. Thanks for getting through all of my questions and thankyou in advance for the assistance.

 

Absolutely it will help, your understanding is correct.

These are all options that could work for you. I've never tried with an external drive of any type, so have no advice to offer you on that. I've partitioned existing drives & installed XP several times, so I know that method works reliably. I used Paragon Partition Manager, which you can find here:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Paragon_Partition_Manager_d2812.html

It works within Windows to ensure it doesn't disrupt your current OS. It takes a while for it to do the partitioning, but it's worked for me everytime. Once the partition is created, you simply boot from the XP CD, point it to the new partition & install.

Good luck with it. I'm sure others will chime in with any experience/advice they might have with external drives.

 

Uhhhmmmmm....... Your going to run into problems trying to dual boot to a usb drive. Trust me there are millions of pages where people are trying to figure this one out. It can be done and it will take some help from other programs, and depending on your BIOS if it allows booting to usb. If not there are programs that can be loaded from a floppy to boot to either USB or firewire from a DOS prompt but it is a pain to have to do it all the time. Check your manufactures web site and see what they have and also check out HP's web site they have some pretty handy stuff there for booting USB.

 

Thanks for the input Wavetar and DAKz. I still would like to hear what anyone else has to say on the matter, but for now I think I'm going to go with the partitioning route -- probably four partitions on the system drive -- 3 X 30 GB for 2 WinXP installs, and one that I'm going to leave empty right now but will be available for Vista if I decide to upgrade, leaving a fourth 160GB partition for kids downloads, etc. I'll keep the second internal as my media source drive.

I have been looking around, and I see that Partition Magic is one of the most popular partition managers. I know Wavetar said he uses Partition Manager -- does anyone have comments about these two (and, while we are at it, what about BootIt?)?

Thanks again.

 

Well I use Partition Magic, and have forever, now understand that I never run just one operating system on a computer, seen to many times that if you come up with a problem and only have one your faced with no computer, and I lot of times the problems is a bad driver, etc something that can be solved easily of you could just get back in there. Also understand that my main computer has a large SCSI RAID array so whatever I use for a partition software I have to feel 100% sure of because in a RAID array you don't have to lose very many stripes before you have lost everything. I use Partition Magic for a couple of reasons, first it has only let me down once and that was a bad selection during a wizard, therefore I don't use the wizards anymore, 2nd for advanced troubleshooting I use Michael K H Au-Yeung - Super WinPE UBCD 2004 Pro - where Partition Magic is integrated into the menus, so that makes it known, usable and when troubleshooting a system I don't have time to try to learn a new software. Then main thing I like about PM is the ability to do what you want, from using a simple easy wizard, to very advanced functions, the software is usable by any level of experience.
Now I am not saying or suggesting that PM is the best, I am just saying what I use and why I use it. The only ther suggestion I might have for you to save you a headache, would be that if you are going to install 2 OS's install 2 different OS's, couple of reasons here, first is space I would install Windows XP on a large partition, then maybe Windows 2000 on a very small partition, Windows 2000 is a small OS and requires a lot less space then XP, this gives you a fall back OS that you can boot into. The next reason is kinda a question mark to me, if you install the same copy of XP twice on your system when you go to activate it, register it and update it I think your going to run into problems. I know people that the 3rd time they have re-installed XP it has failed on them and has taken phone calls to M$ to correct the problem, but to update twice each update and activate twice at the same time seems like it would red flag the cd key to M$ who would then disable the key and not allow windows to boot, (this part I have seen in customers machines where they "borrowed" a friends cd to re-install!), and there are several cases of it documented throughout the forums here. So if you decide to go that way I would be very careful!

 

Hmmm, thanks for the info on Partition Magic. As for installing a second OS, I guess I could go out and purchase another XP (I imagine it must be going for a discount now that Vista is being released), and then I wouldn't have the problem with the CD key.

[Edit -- I just found out that Premiere Pro 2.0 only runs on WinXP -- so I guess I am stuck using a dual boot of XP (or Vista, I suppose))] As for Win2000, does anyone have any experience of how it works with the Adobe apps I'm using (Premiere Pro 2.0, Encore DVD (#.#?), After Effects (1.5, I think)? Perhaps I would be better going to a video editing forum for that question...

Thanks again

 

As far as Adobe products go I have used several with 2000, Illustrated, photoshop, acrobat, and I have used premire on 2000 just not sure if it was the same version you used, which I guess it wasn't. As far as a discount on XP, well Tiger is still getting $139 for Pro SP2, a lot of us aint giving up XP yet. Sorry not much help with the video editing software part but it is only something I play with now and then not anything I am real good at or have taken the time to learn.