Better Living through Partitioning
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 12:02 pm
I know this probably isn't an option for everyone, but...
Some of you may recall the latency issues I was grappling with this past summer. I think my "Walking the Border" could have been a much cleaner, much better song if not for those issues.
In a DRC post last week, I alluded to my new solution: Just starting over..
I already dual-boot on multiple partitions, and I've got shloads of external storage, so it wasn't really an issue to completely reformat my Windows partition. I popped in the CD that originally came with the laptop and performed a fresh install on a blank hard drive. Any time a customization option appeared, I turned off as many options as I could. No extra programs, no frills, no nothing.
When the new Windows partition booted up for the first time, it saw a whole bunch of "New Hardware" items that it wanted to install. I didn't let it. Then, I went into the control panel, to Add/Remove Programs, and removed EVERYTHING.
Next, I plugged in my external hard drive, which had my Adobe Audition install file on it, and installed the software. Started it up, and realized that my sound drivers weren't installed. I popped in the driver CD that came with the computer and installed the sound drivers, but NOTHING ELSE.
I recorded "Elegy for Industry" on this new partition, and guess what went wrong?
Nothing. Adobe did exactly was it was supposed to do. Nothing more, nothing less. No other programs tried to interrupt. Everything ran cleanly, smoothly, and quickly.
This partition does one thing: record music. It can't even access the Internet, so no Windows Update, no malware, and no distractions. Only time will tell if I wind up suffering the traditional system degradation anyway, but with no programs to run, I don't see how I would.
If you've got a big enough hard drive to split, I'd strongly recommend doing something like this.
Some of you may recall the latency issues I was grappling with this past summer. I think my "Walking the Border" could have been a much cleaner, much better song if not for those issues.
In a DRC post last week, I alluded to my new solution: Just starting over..
I already dual-boot on multiple partitions, and I've got shloads of external storage, so it wasn't really an issue to completely reformat my Windows partition. I popped in the CD that originally came with the laptop and performed a fresh install on a blank hard drive. Any time a customization option appeared, I turned off as many options as I could. No extra programs, no frills, no nothing.
When the new Windows partition booted up for the first time, it saw a whole bunch of "New Hardware" items that it wanted to install. I didn't let it. Then, I went into the control panel, to Add/Remove Programs, and removed EVERYTHING.
Next, I plugged in my external hard drive, which had my Adobe Audition install file on it, and installed the software. Started it up, and realized that my sound drivers weren't installed. I popped in the driver CD that came with the computer and installed the sound drivers, but NOTHING ELSE.
I recorded "Elegy for Industry" on this new partition, and guess what went wrong?
Nothing. Adobe did exactly was it was supposed to do. Nothing more, nothing less. No other programs tried to interrupt. Everything ran cleanly, smoothly, and quickly.
This partition does one thing: record music. It can't even access the Internet, so no Windows Update, no malware, and no distractions. Only time will tell if I wind up suffering the traditional system degradation anyway, but with no programs to run, I don't see how I would.
If you've got a big enough hard drive to split, I'd strongly recommend doing something like this.