RME and MOTU hardware in same PC?

[Eric White]

Hi gang,

I have purchased all the motu gear I need to transfer over from RME digi9652 cards to the motu hardware. Can I test the motu hardware and drivers on the same PC along with the RME drivers and hardware or will I take a huge risk of crashing my system? I have a gigs coming up soon and don't want to trash my current setup to test the new one if for some reason I needed to go back to the RME setup... Thoughts???

[RBIngraham]

You should be able to keep both sound cards installed and not have any issues. I've done this (for different reasons) on a regular basis, although for me it was MOTU and an Echo Audiofire unit.

The biggest catch is that any application that uses ASIO will only be able to address one or the other of those sound cards. It won't be able to use both at the same time.

I would take the time to set up each hardware and then save a Preferences file, so that way changing from one to the other should be as simple as loading the correct preference file and then setting it as the default.

[Donnie Frank]

Hi gang,

I have purchased all the motu gear I need to transfer over from RME digi9652 cards to the motu hardware. Can I test the motu hardware and drivers on the same PC along with the RME drivers and hardware or will I take a huge risk of crashing my system? I have a gigs coming up soon and don't want to trash my current setup to test the new one if for some reason I needed to go back to the RME setup... Thoughts???

If you feel you are going to dive into "new and dangerous territory" with your computer, I always recommend imaging or cloning one's hard drive. And honestly, because your SAC machine is somewhat "mission critical," you should have an up-to-date image file, rescue disk and spare hard drive at the ready. I keep 2 SSD's installed in my machine. The second drive is a clone of the first and is recloned after every show. There are free cloning tools that will allow you to either make an exact copy of your existing drive, or backup software that will allow you to make an image file, which can then be used to repopulate your original drive back to its original state. Intel has a free SSD cloning utility that I believe works on non-SSD disks as well.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...&DwnldID=19324

EaseUs also has free cloning and imaging utilities that work well:

http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/download.htm

To avoid cloning faux pas, I always recommend detaching all superfluous hard drives prior to a cloning operation. More than once I have fielded tech calls from folks who either cloned the wrong disk or cloned TO the wrong disk...a mistake I made ONCE. Naturally imaging your drive is the safer choice, but requires a second storage drive for the image file.

No matter which utility you select, doing this from a bootup disk is much easier and makes more sense to the average user than trying to achieve this from the Windows environment. Just take my word for it.

[Eric White]

Thanks Richard and Donnie. I'll be switching over soon enough. I guess ALL our shows ( as an audio community) are mission critical. I will be using Acronis to clone and backup my drives.

[Donnie Frank]

Thanks Richard and Donnie. I'll be switching over soon enough. I guess ALL our shows ( as an audio community) are mission critical. I will be using Acronis to clone and backup my drives.

I have been using a pay version of Acronis for a long time. If you decide to purchase it, beware that the major difference between Acronis 2011 and Acronis 2013 is that the 2013 version allows only ONE installation. And though I don't advocate pirating software, I have to say that I feel a backup utility should be allowed to be installed on ALL of one's machines, not just one machine. After all, the very purpose for purchasing the software in the first place was to back up ALL my data on every machine. I've yet to see any other backup utility limit the user to one machine. An "upgrade" to 2013 started to net a bunch of error messages on all my machines that I had too many installations. For backup software? Are they kidding???? Needless to say I uninstalled 2013 and am now happily using 2011 on all 5 of my computers again. I believe the only real disadvantage of 2011 over 2013 is a lack of RAID support. I purchased 2013 mostly out of customer loyalty. Ironic that they lost my loyalty the second Acronis quit working on all my machines. Up to this point I have followed most EULA's to the letter. With so many free backup and cloning utilities out there, I think this is a real marketing faux pas for Acronis. But I digress....

P.S. No comments, Richard.

[Eric White]

Donnie, glad you informed me of that. I was getting ready to pull the trigger on upgrading. Now I think I wont. Is 2012 also limited, or do you just know about 2013?

[RBIngraham]

I have been using a pay version of Acronis for a long time. If you decide to purchase it, beware that the major difference between Acronis 2011 and Acronis 2013 is that the 2013 version allows only ONE installation. And though I don't advocate pirating software, I have to say that I feel a backup utility should be allowed to be installed on ALL of one's machines, not just one machine. After all, the very purpose for purchasing the software in the first place was to back up ALL my data on every machine. I've yet to see any other backup utility limit the user to one machine. An "upgrade" to 2013 started to net a bunch of error messages on all my machines that I had too many installations. For backup software? Are they kidding???? Needless to say I uninstalled 2013 and am now happily using 2011 on all 5 of my computers again. I believe the only real disadvantage of 2011 over 2013 is a lack of RAID support. I purchased 2013 mostly out of customer loyalty. Ironic that they lost my loyalty the second Acronis quit working on all my machines. Up to this point I have followed most EULA's to the letter. With so many free backup and cloning utilities out there, I think this is a real marketing faux pas for Acronis. But I digress....

P.S. No comments, Richard.

LOL... actually I would agree... seems rather odd unless the license was very affordable or you could add more machines or at least move the license with ease.

[mojogil]

Have you guys had any luck with the built-in Win 7 backup and restore utility?