Trying to have the best of both (old) worlds

[TWDay]

I have a Mac Pro 4,1 that I have flashed to a 5,1 some time ago. Currently, the machine is running High Sierra and Logic X 10.4.8. I have a lot of archived Pro Tools material that I'd like to be able to access, but not enough to upgrade from PT11 to anything newer. I would like to upgrade the Mac Pro to where I can run Mojave and upgrade Logic to the current version. I think that probably means that I'd need to run multiple OS versions on this machine: Mojave and High Sierra.

At this point I have a sad confession to make: I'm not really much of an Apple-guy. I'm 75 and for most of my career I worked on MS and Windows machines, only learning to deal with Apple computers in the last 15 years working as a mobile television truck tech (Final Cut Pro) and teaching technology classes at a music school; which is where I became exposed to Logic (v7, initially). I only use my Mac Pro for music production as a hobbyist and have no plans to upgrade again in this lifetime. Due to a variety of reasons, I'm likely on my last computers of any sort.

I added an Nvidia GeForce GT 640 2048MB video card, which I believe is Metal compatible. Any advice you can offer I'll greatly appreciate.

 

[CSeye]

Hello,
It's always a risk to suggest changes to another person's computer setup.

How many hard drives are installed in your MP 4,1?
I'm not prying but it would helpful to know how you are using those drives. One for Mac OSX? Another for project storage? Yet another for sample libraries? Etc.? Are the drives partitioned?

Do you have all of the original installation discs and authorization codes? Do you have Carbon Copy Cloner or similar that you could clone a drive to another location???

In my case I have a MP 1,1 with four hard drives installed running four different versions of Mac OSX - one per hard drive: 10.4.11, 10.5, 10.6.8, and 10.9. I only use this setup to access older versions of applications and projects. No new projects are completed on this computer. Two drives have two partitions: one partition is for the OS and misc documents; the second partition is a large storage area. Each partition is descriptively name. The other two drives are not partitioned.

Knowing more about your setup will point to potential solutions. A simple approach would be to add a new drive or erase an existing drive to install Mojave and a new version of Logics. Projects could be stored in storage space on other drives or even on external drives.

 

[TWDay]

Thanks for your reply and questions, Cseye,

I have all 4 bays filled with drives, an SSD for the OS and programs, an audio projects 1T drive, a video projects 1TB drive, and a 2TB Time Machine drive. Your approach on that older machine makes a lot of sense. I hadn't even thought about doing the multiple OS split on the backup "history machine." Mine is a 3,1, but it looks like you've managed to convince the operating systems it is something other than a 1,1. If I could get Pro Tools 11 working on the same computer that also runs Logic 9 (and accessories) and Final Cut Pro 5.1 I wouldn't have to do anything tricky with the computer than would be running Mojave. The "Video" drive on my MP 4,1 could easily be moved to the 3,1, since that computer would be the only place I'd edit video (if that ever happens again).

Doing a little research after I posted this question, I realized what killed this project earlier was discovering, after I'd bought my 5,1 video upgrade card Apple blasted support for NVidea graphics cards. So, I might still be stuck where I am, but I can at least start doing what I can on the old 3,1.

Thanks for the advice and expertise.

 

[CSeye]

A beginning point is to make a penci and paper table of applications and compatible/required versions of macOS and Mac OSX.
If you put your video drive in a different Mac, you can add a new drive to the MP 5,1 with a different OS assuming that you have the installer.

Partitioning drives with data is best accomplished by backing up the data to another drive. If the data can be easily copied from one drive to another, it may be best to backup the data to another drive and then erase and partition using the Mac disk utility. At that point install the required OS and app. Again, this depends on availability of installers, authorization codes, etc. Data can be copied to back to the storage partition. I have used drives that are not partitioned for project and data storage for an OS another drive. This has worked well if the drives are all formatted the same.

File system formats available in Disk Utility on Mac

In Disk Utility on your Mac, format disks or volumes using Apple File System (APFS), Mac OS Extended, MS-DOS (FAT), and ExFAT.

support.apple.com

Think this through and continue to search for solutions and pitfalls before taking any action!