[nemanirc]

In order to accomodate iMovie's large video files, I added an IBM 30 GB IDE drive to my B&W G3 as a "slave" to my original 6GB drive. Now, whenever I try to play footage from the hard drive, I get the following error: "The disk responded slowly. It may have been interrupted by something, or it may not be fast enough for playback, capture, or export to camera." The software still imports just fine from a camera, it just cannot play anthing once it is on the hard drive.

Try connecting the second hard drive as the Master on the second IDE controller. Connect devices that are less performance-intensive (CD-ROM drives, Zip drives) as slaves. This doesn't have to do so much with the "slave" status as it does with two high-performance drives sharing a single IDE channel.

check that your second hard drive is "av" capable, should be at least 7200rpm, you probably have a slower drive and there lies your problem. a work around may be to reverse your hard drives and have your original only for your dv editing

Actually a 5400RPM drive is sufficient for Firewire. I think the iMac DV only has a 5400RPM drive itself.

What kind of system do you have? Not all B/W G3's support a slave drive configuration. There were a lot of G3's sold w/6GB drives that have a controller issue with some IBM drives.

I switched the original 6 GB drive to the "slave" and made the new 30 GB drive the master. However, I am still getting the same error. Could it be because I have the system folder on a different partition (I moved it from the 6 GB drive to a 6 GB partition on the new drive)? The new drive is an IBM 7200 RPM IDE drive. I have one of the original 300 MHz G3's with 256 MB RAM.

[nemanirc]

UPDATE: I actually moved all my files over to the 30 GB IBM 7200 RPM drive, made it a "master", and removed the original 6 GB drive. iMovie will now play a movie, but only for about five seconds before I get the same "your drive is too slow" error. Any suggestions?

The documentation in iMovie says the iMovie application and files, need to be on the same drive (or partition) as the MacOS system folder.
I discovered this when I wanted to save some disc space on my main drive and tried to run some iMovie projects from a Western Digital 30GB external firewire drive.
However, I found an "undocumented hack" around part of this requirement, that seems to work for me.
Basically you just make aliases of the Imovie project files from the external hard disc or partition.
My method was as follows...
Capture your iMovie project/clips on your main drive/Mac OS as normal.(This is important! more on this later.)
Move the iMovie project to the desktop, if it isn't there already...(this step is optional, but I find it reduces confusion later on.)
Move/copy the iMovie project to the external drive or partition.
Make an alias, of an entire iMovie project folder file,(the project file and media) that is on the external drive.
Then place that alias (not the actual files!)in an iMovie project folder,in the iMovie application folder, on the drive or partition with the MacOS.
You still need the iMovie application on the drive with the MacOS, but you can run the actual huge iMovie project folder file, (project file and media files) as aliases from an external drive or partition.
The trick is that the iMovie application recognizes those aliases as true files.
After testing to make sure that the proceedure works for you, you can trash the original project file that remains on the desktop main hard disc with the Mac OS, to save disc space.

However,I feel I must make a few additional points.

WARNING! This is undocumented and not Apple certified. I don't know if their are any unforseen complications, by using this proceedure.

Back-up your projects before attempting this... or any major updates.

*Note to readers (and forum moderator)...
the following is some personal experiences and somewhat related insights on the subject that may be edited out, if too lenghty or not appropriate to this thread...

I recently updated the firmware and system software for my Powerbook 2000. The update went fine, but shortly after the updates, the external firewire drive "froze" and would not mount on the powerbook or any other firewire equipped Mac. I eventually had to re-initiallize the external firewire drive disc, to make it usable again. Most of the projects were recovered from back up files, but it was a weeks worth of work and I wasted alot of time getting back to the point where I was before the freeze.

Also, don't believe all the hype about current external Firewire/IEEE 1394 drives. Many (if not all) of these current firewire external drives are not true native firewire drives. They are IDE drives masquerading in firewire cases.
They work fine for storage, but are not suitable for capturing video. I can personally testify, that they drop frames during capture. As for speed, these current IDE-to-Firewire bridge drives do not come even close to approaching the upper 400mbps limit the IEEE 1394 standard is capable of.
That said.I am generally satified with the price/performance ratio of this paticular drive and find it generally useful. However, I feel it is somewhat misleading for a leading drive manufacturer to advertise that this device is "Perfect for Digital Video (DV) editing. Lightning fast performance".

[FdeB]

You really need a fast HD for DV. I've got a Seagate (ST 330630A) 30 Go UDMA 66 7200rpm 2mo cache on my Yosemite 400Mhz 512ram : it works well !

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