[mjohnsey]

I have owned a PC Store for 18 years. This is my first meeting with a MAC. It is a 500Mhz G4 with 512MB RAM. It came from the Government without a HD. I am trying to install a Maxstor 80GB drive.
The OS-10.4 Tiger CD will boot and the installation starts. I managed the partitioning but when the Setup ask me to choose a destination drive the 80GB is not listed. I played with the Drive Utility and noticed at the bottom that the drive was not mounted (definitly a non-PC step). If I try to Check or Restore the drive I get errors. I have no books and no MAC experience. I sure would like to get past this step. It looks like it will be an interesting computer. Thanks.

[Big Mac]

Welcome to the Macintosh®

It is Mac, btw, not MAC in caps. It sounds like you've done things correctly, so it would be good to know what errors you get when you attempt to check the drive.

[polendo]

Need to format first to install Tiger. Did you partition and then formated (for Mac) the HD ? On the disk utility there has to be the option of formating.

regards & welcome!

[mjohnsey]

How ya'll doing?

This is what I see when I boot on the DVD.

1. Select English, Agree to terms. On the destination screen there is nothing to choose.

2. I click on UTILITIES, then DISK UTILITY and on the left it shows:

76.3 GB Maxtor
TIGER
2.6 GB AOpen DUW1616/ARR
Mac OS X Install DVD

3. When I click on the partition named TIGER the info at the bottom shows:

Mount Point: Not mounted
Format: MSDOS File System (FAT32)
Capacity: 76.3 GB
Nothing appears by the others.

4. If I click on "Verify Disk" the following appears:

Verifying volume "TIGER"
**/dev/disk0s1
** Phase 1 - Read FAT
** Phase 2 - Check Cluster Chains
** Phase 3 - Checking Directories
** Phase 4 - Checking for Lost Files
0 files, 331840 free (2500738 clusters)

1 non HFS volume checked
Volume passed verification

Does this sound normal up to this point?

[mjohnsey]

Sorry about not waiting for a reply but Daddy always said that if you weren't doing something, you're burning daylight.

After sending the other post (and reading it) I decided that the MS-DOS File System was probally not right. When I originally partitioned the drive it was the only choice other than "Free Space". I have since went back and worried it a little and I now have the following choices:

Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Mac OS Extended
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive)
Unix File System
Free Space

At this point I'm like a pig with a new watch ..... I look good but aint got a clue.

What would the best choice here and any reason I should split the drive up?

Ya'll take care.

[Randman]

For you needs, there's zero reasons to partition. Stick with one.

[polendo]

Pick the first choice (Mac OS Extended (Journaled))

[Markarian421]

You want the first one:

Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

Then all should be well!

edit: oops, how did I miss the previous post? Anyway, at least two of us agree. Let us know how it goes!

[Al G]

Originally Posted by mjohnsey

At this point I'm like a pig with a new watch ..... I look good but aint got a clue.

Haha--never heard that one before.

As the other posters already mentioned, you want Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Here's an Apple tech note which explains file system journaling:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107249

The case-sensitive options should be avoided at all cost. It would be better if they didn't even show up without having to jump through hoops.

Partitioning is pretty much a personal choice. It's not necessary. You can do it if you prefer to keep separate partitions for different uses. But the problem you run into is trying to anticipate out how large to make each partition without running out of space for future use.