FCP freezes capturing to external HD

Hi, I have G5 10.4.6 FCP 4.5 capturing mini-dv from sony GV-D300 deck,
footage from XL1a works ok to internal drives but getting full.
When capture 'now' to seagate 300GB ext. FCP freezes up.
On 'get info' for seagate file system is MS-DOS (FAT32). Do I need to formate drives? how do I do this if so, any ideas?
Thanks, nick

Your drive is Windows formatted. You need to reformat to the Mac OS. You can do this through the Disk Utility. It's pretty self-explanatory.

Andy

Formatting is in your future, but please know that formatting will destroy everything already on the drive. Back up Everything.

Koz

its funny. i bought an iomega fw400 external the other day (its one of those with like 8 ports on it designed to attach to a mac mini).

it met most of my specs, (couldnt say what chipset it used) so i bought it as it was all that local dealer had that even came close. so i brought it home, formatted it mac extended but i was surprised by the fact that it consistently dropped frames and froze on capture.

just as a test, i moved the whole of the project files (capture scratch, source files etc...) to the drive and its been working like a champ ever since - go figure ?