New external drive setup

I'm kinda new to Macs, though I've been editing for a few years on one, the OS is still a bit foreign.

What is the best type of format (I think it's called 'erase') for external media drives. Extended? Journaled or no?

And on another topic, I recently bought 4 LaCie 1Tb extremes. 1 doesn't want to mount everytime. But what really scares me is I backed up 400G to a second one, then synchronized to a third. Now the sync wont run but gives an error about unexpected filetype or directory attribute or something like that.

If that rings a bell could you at least tell me if I am doing something wrong or maybe not setting up the drives correctly? Is there a disk utility for fixing Mac volumes besides the "repair" one in OSX?

thanks for helping a newb,
Tom

> What is the best type of format (I think it's called 'erase') for external media
> drives. Extended? Journaled or no?

Mac OS Extended, Non-Journaled. Journalling is not recommended, but the majority of drives I've used are Journaled and I have yet to see it cause any problems.

> And on another topic, I recently bought 4 LaCie 1Tb extremes.

You happened to pick one of the two absolute worst brands of external drives available for video editing. Do a search for 'Lacie' or 'Maxtor' on this forum and you'll see tons of horror stories. And the 1TB Lacies are among the most unreliable ones (the smaller the Lacie, the less danger it tends to be in). My advice would be to return those suckers before you start putting things onto them.

Don't buy Lacie or Maxtor. Brands recommended in here: Promax, Seagate, OWC, WiebeTech, G-Raid. Look at this thread:

[www.lafcpug.org]

> If that rings a bell could you at least tell me if I am doing something wrong
> or maybe not setting up the drives correctly? Is there a disk utility for fixing
> Mac volumes besides the "repair" one in OSX?

If you're using FireWire drives, you must own a legitimate copy of DiskWarrior. Non-negotiable. This tool has saved hundreds of lives...and film projects.