Scratch Drive Replacement

Awhile ago I wrote that I had overloaded the dedicated drive in my computer rendering the drive inopporative. I want to put a new internal drive in it now and deal with the media on the old drive at a later time. Will the new drive be a simple "plug and play" or will I have to do some sort of partitioning which I don't know what that means or how to do it. I'm using an G4-OS9 with the very ancient FCP2. Yes, I know you're all gasping! Speaking of upgrading, since I can't afford the G5-OS10 FCP4.5 (or is that now 5?), is there something I can upgrade to, but using the G4? Lastly, what's a good make for a drive and what speed should I be looking for. Thank you. Sincerely, Daniel Weisman

You will possibly need to format the disk and, of course, install all your software. Just start up from your system software disk and follow instructions.

I also have a client who is still on a G4 running OS9 and FCP 2. This is a good stable combination, but if you want to, you can probably upgrade that machine all the way to OS 10.4.8 and FCP 5.1.2. Which is to say, you can get to the most current versions of everything. Just make sure you have enough RAM to run it all.

I'm assuming you are on the 'Quicksilver' G4 or a mirror door G4, not the Blue and White one.

And right now is a great time to upgrade, since there is a special offer that lets you trade in your old disks and get the whole studio set (motion, soundtrack pro, dvdsp and FCP) for cheap. You probably won't be able to run Motion, depending on your video card.

Oh wait - scratch drive - not your main hard drive. You will only need to check that it is correctly formatted. I think in OS 9 that's under 'Disk Setup'. Or was it Disk Utility? I can't recall - but do a search for the word 'disk' on your computer and see what comes up. No need to aprtition it, unless you want to.

Daniel,

What G4 do you have? Reason I ask is that my Quicksilver 2002 dual 1.0 GHz G4 runs Final Cut Studio with a video card upgrade. I have SATA drives inside the G4 except for the boot drive which is ATA.

G4' s can work if the speed requirement for the software is met.

Older G4's have a size restriction for drives mounted natively of around 128gigs. Larger drives can be used with a Tempo ATA133 PCI card. Barry

Thank you for everyone's response. Being that I'm mostly computer illiterate, I
don't know what you mean by "drivers mounted natively". But what I do
understand is that I can't put in a new drive that's higher than 128gigs
unless I get the PCI card. What drive speed should I be looking for? I had
once got an external drive but it turned out that it was too slow to hold
media.

Daniel
Get any ATA drive other then Maxtor (but in a pinch it would be OK,) that you can find around 128 GIGs You can get bigger but your Mac won't see any more without that sonnet card. You'll need to set the jumpers to slave Look on the drive it will show you. I like the Seagates or Western Digital. You can screw it on the plate above the drive you have now it's easy.
My sons have my old G4 Dual 450 and run FCP 4 in Panther I think. I used to get a lot of video done in FCP 1.2 on an old G3 233 but I didn't do to many effects. But that second drive is a must!

------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

What I meant by "Natively" is when you connect the drive directly to the motherboard. My G4 Quicksilver only supports drives under 130 gigs, when I tried to connect a 250GB drive "natively" only 128GB were recognized. When I upgraded to Tiger earlier this year, I replaced my 80GB system drive with a Seagate 120GB. Barry