Extra Hard Drive

[turdburglar]

I had a g4 mdd with dual 867, 768 ram 8O ghz hard drive and filled it up with music and photos to the point where i couldn't use dvd2onex, now I have just installed a maxtor diamondmax 200 pata133 hard drive to give me more room for work with idvd, photos and music and now i dont know the best way to set it up, either transfer all to the bigger hd or run both hd's? any advice from some one who has had a similar problem or running two hd's. thanks!

[terryj]

I run four so maybe I can be of some help...?


HD 1: ( 100GB) Partioned into two: Boot HD ( 60) Itunes(40)
HD2: (300GB) All incoming DV Capture
HD3: (80GB) Partitoned into two: MTR(40), DTOX (40)
HD4: (200GB) Partioned into 4: PS Scratch Disk (10GB),
Job Documents (20Gb), Downloads (20 GB)
DVDStudio Builds (150GB)

Keeps things organized and clutter free. And if I ever have
the need to clean one off, I just open Disc Utility, select the
Partition, and erase it, which keeps it clean and ready to use again.

[turdburglar]

"Honey I shrunk the hard drive"
I have decided to run Jaguar on the 80g and Tiger on the 200g, cos I dont understand how to use a partitioned hard drive. Because I was having trouble booting on the old hd with just the grey screen coming up all the time, I thought I would erase (o pass) the 80g and start again, now my hd is only 57.3g (wtf?) and after installing the first Jaguar cd it restarts with a grey screen? Is this hd stuffed? I have used disc utility to verify and repair and it tells me it O.K. any ideas please.

[terryj]

When using Disc Utility, look at the lower Right Corner for
your S.M.A.R.T. status. If it says anything
other than VERIFIED, then the HD is hosed.

Zeroing out all data should not have affected you a loss in
disc space. The "grey screen at boot up" often points to
either (a) HD failure, or (b) OS loading failure.

My HD3 took a hit a week ago, I was experiencing
slow boot times and then eventually after running
Disc Utility, it showed me the S.M.A.R.T. status on
HD3 had failed. Since it was the original
IBM drive that came with the G4, and I had Applecare,
I called and they replaced it for free.
Good thing too...I could never get it to mount, I went
so far as trying to erase and reformat, no go.
It was an IBM Desktar drive, and according to a lot of
posters on Apple's boards, they have a high rate of failure,
usually at the three year mark.

As for Partitoning:
What you could do at this point is reboot from the Jag disc,
re-select the HD, erase the drive back to
an Macintosh Extended format, recovering all the space,
then you can go in and select Partition, and select two
(2) parttions, and in the first one (selected) type 50.00
in the GB box, then click enter. this should split the other
partition to 24.65GB ( or thereabouts) and then click the
"Partition" button on the lower right. It will ask you to
proceed, click ok.
When it is done, REBOOT, then boot back into the Jaguar discs,
and install your OS on the first larger partition, and there you go.
Reboot and you should now have what appears to be three
drives on your desktop,
One which is actually the 80Gb split in two, and then your 200GB.

Good luck with it...hopefully it still has a great S.M.A.R.T.
status, and thus just needs to be re-partitoned.

[rotuts]

Terr

I saw your comments on the IBM deskstar I have two about a year old. I got them at Fry's in CA on sale after a non salesman there from the tech valley said they were the best, very quiet eetc.

its hard for me to tell whats really best ie will last a long timed. I have maxtor and quantum.

what do you feel is best. I have a friend that works at one of the major drive manufactures and he said that the best drives are OEM's, the one not quite up to that standard are boxed and sold retail.

waht do you think?

thanks rotuts

[havema-1]

AFAIK it is the 75GB IBM Deskstar that was a lemon. Other IBM/Hitachi Deskstar models should be OK.

I have that very 75 GB model and it still works OK. I also have three 250 GB Deskstars which are OK, and very quiet BTW.

[rotuts]

Mine are also the 250's and have the Hatachi label.

any thoughts on those?

rotut

[terryj]

I cannot speak on 250 GB or higher IBM drives;
after having replaced several 75 GB IBM drives
for customers, as well as the stock
Apple/IBM OEM 80 GB drives,
and 46 GB IBM OEM drives in various RAID arrays,
that's been enough for me not to personally reccommend
any drives made by IBM.


Now don't get me wrong; I've seen failures also
in off the shelf Maxtor 100GB drives, as well as
OEM 60GB Seagate drives.

So it can be argued that all any manufacturers, just like
Ford, GM, Chrysler all make a product that occasionally
has had problems on the asembly line.

If I had to personally reccomend ANY hard drives, based
upon my most recent installs, tempered with personal
bias, it would be OEM drives made by
MDT(Magnetic Data Technology)(80gb-120gb), OEM Western Digital
(80gb-160gb), and off the shelf Western Digital Drives
(160gb-320gb).

[turdburglar]

When using Disc Utility, look at the lower Right Corner for
your S.M.A.R.T. status. If it says anything
other than VERIFIED, then the HD is hosed.

S.M.A.R.T. status says "not supported" and it is almost 3 years old, the last time I started it, it beeped at me?. I have wasted a few days trying to erase, reload osx and repair it but at least it has been a valuable experience in learning (now I know how pc users feel)
Thanks again for all your help.

[rotuts]

What does SMART mean? Ive seen and used the verify and repair buttons. is that what that is?

rotuts

[turdburglar]

What does SMART mean? Ive seen and used the verify and repair buttons. is that what that is?

rotuts

S.M.A.R.T stands for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology.