Crashed Drive?

Go ahead and laugh, I'm still using a FCP 2--I got it and the computer for free! It's on a Power Mac G4 using OS9. It has a dedicated 60 gig hard drive which I've been using and
re-using for short projects. I had just about filled the drive when the red capacity line came on. So I stopped and began to trim or delete the clips I didn't need, when suddenly, I hear some clicking and whirling, then it seemed that all my media that was stored on it ceased to exist. After restarting a couple of times, hoping to restore it, a message appeared, something like, "To initialize drive, designate a name." I hadn't done that because I didn't know what that meant. Am I "up the creek" or was this a "hiccup"?
P.S. Fortunately, I had already exported my most recent project and the one that was in it I can restore from the original tapes and earlier versions if I have to.
Thank you.

Yikes! This is scary. Don't do anything yet. You initialize and you erase the drive. Is this an internal or external drive? If external shut down your Mac and unplug the drive. Wait an hour or 2. Plug it back in and restart your Mac. See if it is recognized. If it is, carefully get some stuff off there or copy it to another external drive and re-initialize this one.

Michael Horton
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Quote

I had just about filled the drive when the red capacity line came on

I think you made a fatal mistake here, Daniel: I think you overfilled the drive. Rule of thumb is you should NEVER go over 90% of capacity on ANY hard drive (60 GB hard drive means you should ALWAYS have at least 6 GB unused). You really shouldn't even get that close to 90% (80% is safe). Your stuff is still there...it's just that the heads can't read it anymore.

Try Mike's recommendations & DON'T INITIALIZE!!! I overfilled a drive ONCE and it quit & asked me to "Initialize" it (wipe it out & reformat). It was a gonner. I think you are "up the creek" with this hard drive.

BTW...version 5.1.2. is pretty cool (so are the G5's). You may want to upgrade your suite soon

- Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I'd go buy a new IDE drive and install it in the G4 and install a new OS on it. Use it as the new start up drive and start backing up from the old drive. BTW you'll have to set one drive the new one as a Slave with the jumpers included.

Thanks to everyone for responding to my crisis. Two responses used the letters BTW. What does this mean? Can I just pull out the bad drive and put in a new one? If so, is there something I'd need to do to make it work? Or is it "Plug and Play"? Which drive manufacturer is recommended?

BTW = "By the way"

a few other common ones:
IMO = "In my opinion"
IMHO = "In my humble opinion"
AFAIK = "As far as I know"
IIRC = "If I remember correctly"

Scott