Mac OS X Help, Please

[fabrisse]

I'm a PC gal.

My sister has an external hard drive where she wants to store her iTunes. It's plug and play for OS 9, but I'm supposed to do something with the disk utility to make it recognize the drive. I've found disk utility, but apparently I'm not asking the right question in help because I've had no luck. It'll show the drive, but it won't make it available to other uses -- like iTunes.

Help?

Comments

[siderea]

WARNING: "Plug and play" for a SCSI drive (as opposed to USB) does NOT mean you can plug it into a running device. Machine must be off to add a SCSI drive. The external SCSI drive MUST be powered on first, before the CPU is turned on.

Is it SCSI? Check this chart.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

That part we got right. We followed the directions, and it's humming away politely. We just can't get OS X to recognize that it's there to let us store data.

[siderea]

Good. It still matters if it's SCSI or USB or what?

Wait: OS X or OS 9?

[siderea]

And what's the name of the disk utility?

[siderea]

Wait, the disk utility?

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I'll quote in full leaving the brand name out:

Your L Drive was formatted to plug & play use with Windows 98 SE, Me, 2000, and XP and Mac OS 9.x. Mac OS 10.x Useres: Use Apple's Disk Utilities to initialize your L Drive in mac OS Extended after connecting the drive to your computer.

I assumed it was the disk utility, but I couldn't find anything that made the external drive visible to the system. It's there, but I can't, for instance, export Sis's iTunes library to the drive for storage.

As far as USB or SCSI, I can't tell from the literature -- the company just refers to the product as a hard drive. Does the term Fire Wire help?

Sis has OS X.

[siderea]

AH! (Firewire == "Or what")

But regardless, I think I now know what's up.

"to initialize" == formatting the disk. Just like with a floppy. It needs to be in Mac OS Extended format.

Open the Disk Utility.

Select the new HD. Be Really Really sure you have selected the correct HD for the next operation.

With that drive selected. Hit the "ERASE" tab across the top of the window.

On the Erase pane, select the Volume Format: Mac OS Extended. Give it a name. Up to you whether to add the OS9 drivers.

Then hit "erase".

NOTE: if you do this with the wrong drive selected, you'll wipe out your sister's computer.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I'll wait until we get home tonight and we'll make the choices together.

Yes, I'm a coward. *g*