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SaleenS351

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 2, 2004
287
0
California
I just purchased a 250GB G-drive External HDD. It didn't come with any software or anything. I purchased it to use for video editing and working with imovie and backing other various files. Is there anything I need to do or is it ready to go out of the box? Thanks in advance.
 

Dopeyman

macrumors 6502a
Sep 5, 2005
613
48
Los Angeles!
Once it's hooked up, most likely a window will pop up saying that an unrecognizable media has been inserted... At that point, just click on the Erase/Format button. Then it should load up Disk Utility.. Just initialize the drive and you're all set....
 

bigandy

macrumors G3
Apr 30, 2004
8,852
7
Murka
if you're doing video work and it's not FireWire, use with caution. my USB2 drive used to kill my video. i got a FW caddy for it and it was fine after that...
 

dops7107

macrumors 6502a
Mar 19, 2005
995
0
Perth, Oztrailya
It might be worth making a small partition (about 20 gigs perhaps) to put OS X on, so you can use it as a bootable drive in case your main internal drive fails. I note that you have more than one computer however, so it might not be so crucial. Still handy to have in case you need to rescue another computer - someone else's, for example.
 

SaleenS351

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 2, 2004
287
0
California
It's a firewire 800 so the USB isnt an issue. When I turn it onht e drive automatically mounts to the desktop does this mean that I need to do nothing?

Edit: when i want to put video on my computer to edit in imove should i plug the camera directly into the external HDD or to the computer then save to the External one?
 

dops7107

macrumors 6502a
Mar 19, 2005
995
0
Perth, Oztrailya
SaleenS351 said:
It's a firewire 800 so the USB isnt an issue. When I turn it onht e drive automatically mounts to the desktop does this mean that I need to do nothing?

You might want to reformat it into HFS+ (use Disk Utility) for better performance and storage capacity. Unless you want to share it with Windows machines as well. It is probably already formatted in FAT32 but you can check through Disk Utility.

SaleenS351 said:
Edit: when i want to put video on my computer to edit in imove should i plug the camera directly into the external HDD or to the computer then save to the External one?

Um, not too sure about this one, but plugging directly into the computer seems more sensible to me. I don't think plugging it into the HD will automatically save it there; you still have to instruct the OS to save it.
 

CanadaRAM

macrumors G5
SaleenS351 said:
Edit: when i want to put video on my computer to edit in imove should i plug the camera directly into the external HDD or to the computer then save to the External one?
Plug the camera into the computer directly and capture to the INTERNAL drive. Move the files to the external drive later for storage/working.

THe Firewire 400 and 800 ports share the same firewire controller. If you capture to a Firewire drive, you are doubling the data stream through the FW controller chip. Capturing to SATA or IDE internal drives means only one trip through the FW controller, and fewer possibilities of trouble.
 

kwajaln

macrumors 6502
Sep 18, 2004
368
0
CHICAGO!
SaleenS351 said:
sorry to be a pain but what exactly is HFS and FAT32?
Your iBook has Help menus for a reason. I recently learned the answers to your questions when I read those same Help menus when I got my 500GB external. Amazing the info that's there.
 

SaleenS351

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 2, 2004
287
0
California
kwajaln said:
Your iBook has Help menus for a reason. I recently learned the answers to your questions when I read those same Help menus when I got my 500GB external. Amazing the info that's there.

Thanks for the tip
 
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