Ok, dumb basic questions, but does anyone out there know....

Okay, I'm to the point where I know I have to reformat and reload my OS-X system but I have never done it before. I've been getting way too many anomallies in FCP and I need to establish if it is a hardware or software problem. I was advised to do this but I have never re-formated and reloaded the O/S for a MAC before so can anyone out there tell me: 1) what file system I should use for the O/S driive? Should it be Mac OS Extended (journaled) or Mac OS extended?

How about my video drive(s)? Currently I am using the internal onboard raid controller (I don't know if the raid is just software within the OS-X or if the motherboard actually has a raid controller) I have 3 500 GB Western Digital SATAII's raided together as a Raid 0. My question is: A. Should I leave these drives as separate drives unraided? B. What format should I use for these drives, Mac Extended (journaled) or Mac Extended?

Any other tips, pointers, hints that would be valuable to me as I am loading the O/S fresh and new?

What hardware and what OS level are you at?

You can choose to do an archive and install to reload the OS without loosing the applications.
This will not change the current drive statistics which should be HFS+ Journaled.

Don't choose the UFS (Unix) file system for this.

Like I said, which hardware and what OS level?

I assume that this is a MacPro because three 500 GB drives are RAID'd as RAID 0.
If this is a RAID hosted by the OS through Disk Utilities, you will loose that RAID set when you reinstall the operating system. The system provides a software RAID 0 which is very fragile.
You will most likely loose every file that is on the current RAID 0 volume once the OS is reinstalled.

that's pretty drastic.
a last step, really.

what else have you tried?
trashed your FCP prefs? thats teh standard cure for "annomolies" in FCP
read this: [www.lafcpug.org]


System Drive: Journaled
Media Drives: not Journaled. (i think... but i haven't worked that much with raided drives

if your media can lay back of un-raded drives you could try that.


nick