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]

There should be no reason the graphic app should interfere with Logic (now… seing is believing…) have you some prefpanel gizmos or some apps running 24/7 in background which may cause mayhem?

Now, a separate account will do if it not the graphic apps themselves (they are here for all users if you have installed them as admin. No you can't move apps to another drive while using the original drive for system, it's just not this way OS X works (you can but it's rocket science and to much of DIY to bother about) but having another system on the other drive with only the audio stuff installed is ok.

Try the separate user first, now, is it's still fishy, there's something wrong in your system. Unused apps in OS X are unused, even when launched, save if they do nasty dirty things on their own (like some pro services in Adobe CS to name them, buggy nasty crap, can't remember their name, but it's the update system and the jobs version management).