Installation paths/best practice: dual boot system and VST folders

Hi
I am in the process of setting up a new PC (having issues with the Maschine as described in a separate thread...).
But I also have a general question:

• Eventually I intend to run a dual boot system on this computer: Win 10 and hackintosh (just to play around with it...). For that I partitioned my 1 TB (m2) SSD into 3 partitions: a) Win 10,(c, b) empty, reserved for the hackintosh install and c) Content (d: within Windows), but "Content" intended to be shared across systems.
  I installed the software on c: and the NI Content on d:
  When I now will install MacOS, can I use the content on d: (which will have a different name on MacOS; but by using NTFS and a NTFS driver on Mac OS I should be able to see that partition)?
  Basically, it is the same as using an external drive for content and using that external drive on 2 PCs. Will that work?
  
• Secondly, what is the best practice for VST folders?
  I set up 2 folders, with subfolders:
  - \_VST2
  - \_VST3
  - \_VST2\VST32bit
  - \_VST2\VST64bit
  It looks like I cannot set the location for VST 3 in any software? So, does that VST3 folder make sense? And, is there any 32bit VST3 and 64 bit VST?
  I am clear about the VST2 world, but not if the VST 3 folder makes sense?
  Or, asked differently, will any software write VST3 files in the VST2 / 64 bit folder? Then I would create a mess...

Thank you

 

you can share the libaries but not the dll´s. So install e verything on one system, then you go to the other system and in native acces if you hoover over the products sometimes it shows a magnifier glas and locate, you click on locate and......you already know i guess........you then locate the libary
Ohh i forgot to mention - before install anything set the locations right in the prefs

Uwe

 

thanks Uwe. True, that's how I thought: .dlls are not shared, but "content", samples, soundbanks etc are.

But practically, let's say I have everything installed from the Win system. Then I would install MacOS and the NI software: Wouldn't Native Access "overwrite" the content on the shared drive (I do not know if this would be a problem, if the overwritten files are just replaced, as samples etc are not platform specific). In other words: Before I can "relocate" as described by you there has to be an installation already; so basically, no need to "relocate"?

 

Having a dual boot system with both Windows a macOS (Hackintosh) on the same partitioned drive is a bad idea, get a drive for each OS, so each drive has it's own EFI bootloader... humble advice form a guy who has been Hackintoshing for a long time. If you choose to ignore this advice make sure you have full disk backups/clones, if your experimenting and learning you will make mistakes...

There's no such thing as VST3 32bit afaik. None of NI software is VST3, so no need to worry about that.

Sharing a data drive for the libraries would be ideal but then you have to pick a filesystem, if windows is your primary OS i guess that means NTFS, a mac can only read NTFS and not write to it unless you install some 3rd party driver, last time I've tried it makes the drive slower... Dont even try formats that work for both win and mac like Fat, ExFat, etc... they either work poorly with NI apps or dont work at all, not to mention they're old and designed for smaller thumb drives.

As for installing the libraries the simplest way is to just overwrite the installation, meaning reinstalling it on the second system, relocate won't be available if the system is fresh, there are workarounds to tricky Native Access into enabling the relocate option (you basically copy .plists into the folder NA expects) but I do not recommend this...

 

thanks D-One ! Hmm, I only have one M2 Slot on my mainboard, I had hoped to benefit from the (slighlty) better performance for both systems. But I hear you, I should consider a 2nd SSD (connected via SATA 6GB then) for the second system... My mini-ITX system and case have 2 more slots available for that.

Thanks for explaining the VST3 thing - that's what I thought (w/o knowing for sure). I understand that many (or some?) soft synths won't even let you decide where VST3 dlls are installed. I think all of my VSTs let me decide where to put VST2 but only some to chose the VST3 location; so they will be installed in a "system chosen folder". In practice that should not be an issue, it just feels weird when you aim to control file locations on your own. The risk is that some DAWs will not find all VSTs or you'd have to set many paths for them to find all VSTs.
On a side note: Do I need to install the 32-bit versions when I run a (Win 10) 64 bit systems and 64 bit VSTs are available? I think they never will be used?
And, I realize that I need to familiarize with the advantages of VST3 (beyond that 3 sounds better than 2 ;-) ), e.g. my great U-HE synths.

I will only find time to experiment with hackintosh the next coming weeks... And will try out things then. I think the way how you describe the (re) installation is the way to go.

Just also regarding NTFS. Interesting that you experienced performance downgrades. I cannot comment on that, but I run a paragon NTFS driver on my MBP and that seems to run well, however, I never really thought about performance, as I only use it for storing fotos on an external HDD (anyway slower...) and shared Win/MacOS USB sticks. WIth these I regularely have problems that they are not recognized on either of the computers, sometimes I need to "consult" a third computer (e.g. my Surface) for them to be recognized again... But I do not think that is a Paragon driver issue...

 

No problem!
Note that an SSD connected to an M2 slot does not necessarily equal better performance, it will only be faster if the SSD is an NVMe SSD.
I'd do that, as long as there's space on your mITX case for another drive, SSD's are small so it shouldn't be an issue, this way when you mess up you won't brick your Windows OS drive.

Some companies offer installers that let you choose the path, others dont, it's not a big deal since you can move them after installation.
IMO it's uncalled for to be installing plugins in custom locations, I dont see any advantage about it.
I dont see any point in installing 32-bit versions either, it will only clutter your system.

VST3 can do cool things such as read the DAW track name and info, they can communicate with other VST3 plugins in other tracks, turn off processing when no signal is detected to save CPU, etc... generally, I feel like the features are more useful for mixing or really complex plugins.

I've bought either Paragon NTFS or Tuxera, can't exactly remember, transferring files was slow but this was like 4 years ago, the drivers might be a lot better now, I remember it being finicky with external drives but worked great for internal ones.
I'd recommend only installing it on Mac, in windows, it will cause it to see the Mac Drive and attempt to fix it, giving you a 5 seconds countdown on boot, if you miss it and dont hit "cancel" windows automatically tries to "fix" a drive it really doesn't understand and will brick it, learned it the hard way.