external harddrive

Guys im new here and asking for your help. Bought external hard drive and when i try capturing video it reads that it is allocading disk space. What am i doing wrong thanks>

hey, welcome! im in houston.

what kind of hard drive did you get? brand and type? did you format it before you used it?

shoot don't remember brand. firewire/usb ready. according to instructions hard drive was compatible w/ pc/mac formatted ready

sorry accomdat drive (80GB)

fw or usb?

as a general rule you need to format ANY new drive before use. its just a smart practice. using disk utility format it as mac os extended.

and if its connected usb, it probably ant gonna cut it. usb cant maintain a constant data rate.

and im a little bitt leery about that brand of drive in the first place...

No ... what you need to do is capture to your computer first, then transfer the media to your drive.
This will fix your deal.
Luna

that would work if you have a secondary internal drive. its not widely advisable to capture to your boot drive.

A drive that says it's "compatible w/ pc/mac formatted ready" is not going to work with video on a Mac. Format it Mac OS X Extended before putting anything on it. And use firewire only, never USB for video.

And when you do capture, use Log & Capture if at all possible. If you're going to use Capture Now, be sure to set a Capture Now limit, or you'll see that "allocating space" message until the cows come home.

Don't let it fill up to more than 90% full. With only 80 GB capacity, that won't take long.

Aren't you glad you asked?

Scott

I've never had a problem capturing to boot drive - in 5 years od FCP on a G4 and then a G5.

Best


Harry.

<<<I've never had a problem capturing to boot drive - in 5 years od FCP on a G4 and then a G5.>>>

Nor have we on three different machines.

It's an old wive's tale. Some of those stick around forever.

Koz

<<<I've never had a problem capturing to boot drive - in 5 years od FCP on a G4 and then a G5.>>>

Me neither... and on a TiBook there's little choice.
Luna

I'm running out of space on my Seagate 300 GB external hard drive. I'm thinking of buying another one. They're at sale at Fry's for $150 this weekend -- after rebate. I've had no problems with the hard drive, but I'm wondering if the 7200 RPM is good enough. Should I be looking for a faster hard drive? Also, could someone talk about some other storage options? Thanks!

ok, how about an external SATA array

What do I have to spend and where do I find it? :-)

well, as everyone here knows - im a HUGE fan of promax products. and id suggest this as a starting place:

[promax.com]

Yes, but if you capture to your boot drive, how do you maintain it? I've always been taught to erase the media drive between every major show. It's one of the things you can do to prevent drive fragmentation. If you dump media after finishing your show, you cannot erase it because your apps and docs live on the boot drive.

Therefore, in the long run--you should keep all media files on a separate disk that you can maintain properly-and that means the ability to erase it.

If you have a TiBook, you are not forced to use the Boot Drive. You can use a decent FireWire drive on a PCMCIA card. In fact, that's the only way I would work with a TiBook.

Kevin Monahan

wait? a Ti book doenst have a firewire port?

ive been using 17" Al books for 2 years now on the built in FW port under some seriously hard situations and i have yet to have any troubles...

Not sure what Kevin is talking about. Please elaborate. Are you thinking ibook maybe, as opposed to Titanium Powerbook (Ti-book).
L

For SATA drives try MacGurus.com also. The owner's name is Rick and he's very helpful. I've bought 3 SATA raids from him and they work very well.

Joe Brown