[inskiP]

I'm a newbie here and this is my very first post. Maybe it belongs in another place in the forum, or the topic has already been discussed. If so, please point me in the right direction.

Anyway, I believe I have G4 Quicksilver 2002. I have two internal HD's one is my start-up and applications and the other (Seagate) is my scratch disk and data drive.

I just got an external HD, a 300GB Seagate. My Mac recognizes 279.5GB. That's normal, right?

My question is, when I initialize/format in "disk utility" do I click/select where it says

275.5 GB Initio...

or

SEA_DISK

These are the same HD, does it matter what I select?

The instructions say to click initialize to format the drive as one volume, but I don't see the word "initialize" anywhere.

Also, would I want to back-up my start-up system on an external HD? How? And is it necessary to partition? Partitioning is basically just for organization, correct? The main purpose of this drive is for archiving photos. I may want to have a back-up of my applications there. I'm somewhat technically challenged...Thanks in advance.

[tooki]

<long version>
The 275.5 GB (yep, that's the right amount) is the disk itself. Note that when this is selected, partitioning options are available.

The "SEA_DISK" is the partition name. When it's selected, only options that apply to a single partition are offered. (If you had multiple partitions, it would be more obvious what the difference is.) I'm assuming it's FAT-formatted now (for Windows), which basically doesn't really support multiple partitions.

To reformat from one type (e.g. FAT) to another (e.g. HFS+ [Mac OS Extended]), Disk Utility requires that you select the entire drive.

In Disk Utility on Mac OS X, at least in Tiger, "Initialize" has been replaced with the more straightforward "Erase". </long version>

<short version>
So yeah, just click on 275.5GB, select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and press Erase. Acknowledge all the warnings and in a few minutes you'll be ready to go. </short version>

tooki