This is one that I should know, but clearly I do not. The question is for my traveling gear, 15" G4 Powerbook, LaCie 250 gig firewire 800, FCP 3, OS10.2.8. Prior to adding the external LaCie drive, I had partitioned my "60" gig internal for system, programs and media. This was done primarily to preserve the media files in the event of problems with the programs, which to date, thankfully have not occurred.
Now, with the external drive, I want to move all of the media files to this, (most of this I've done), erase the partitioned drive (to allow more space for the system) and re-install the programs (FCP, iLife, etc) and still maintain the links I currently have with FCP projects, render files, iTunes music links (my arrangements), etc.. History has shown me that any disturbance of these files whatsoever will inevitably create issues at some point.
The question is in two parts, can I maintain links with this procedure and how can I "save" my iTunes library so that existing links will not be lost. Obviously, with the Apple-mandated use of the iLife package on the boot drive, which will be erased, there is a curious problem of how and where I can move these music beds/transitions so that they will be "found" on reinstallation.
Any hope here? Or will I spend the next months "reconnecting media?"...Maybe...
Thanks

Why are you erasing the drive?

Thanks for your quick reply, Jeff.

The reason, in short, for my wishing to erase the drive is infinite ignorance in my original partition allocation. I felt, at that moment of quandry, that I needed a maximum area for media, less for programs and still less for the system drive. Not well planned. As anyone with a wit of Mac savvy knows, the system is a hungry beast and more so when burning dvd's.

Anyway, unless I am once again plunging into the abyss of stupidity, I believe (and was told so by a self-styled McGuru), that to re-configure the partition sizes, I must erase the drive. Ouch. Not part of my workflow at all. I will take any and all reasonable bids to avoid this. My earlier post was with this end in mind. If anyone would care to help my rewrite the end, I await your submission.

Don't erase your drive. I would either copy the drive to your FireWire drive with Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13260) or repartition with iPartition. (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23828)

Carbon Copy Cloner will copy all the contents of your drive to your FireWire drive. Then partition your internal drive and copy the files back onto it. This will take more time but the shareware only costs $5. iPartition will allow you to repartition the drive without moving or harming the contents in any manner. However, you'll pay $20 for the ease and convenience of just repartitioning the drive. Either is preferable to reinstalling all the applications.

Jeff,
Sorry about the delay in responding...work does that. Anyway, thanks for the sage advice...but of course, I have a further question. Have you used these applications? Or, indeed, has anyone in the forum done so? I am looking for some real world pros and cons, benefits and risks of these or other such "tools" for partition change.
Thanks

One thing to keep in mind after you make these changes and put your FCP files on the external drive. In FCP3 you will need to go to the scratch disk item under preferences and set it for the external drive, otherwise all your big capture and render files will keep being saved to the internal drive.

There is one "gotcha" to beware of however. If you ever start up FCP and the external drive isn't available, the scratch disk preference will revert to your documents folder on the internal drive. FCP will not even warn you of this (unless it's looking for a file it can't find). The problem is, next time you have the external drive connected and resume working on a project, FCP will not automatically switch the scratch disk back to the external drive and it will continue to put render and capture files on your internal drive. You need to manually set the scratch disk back to the external drive if this happens.

This "feature" has bitten me a couple times, and the result was that some render files I needed were on the internal drive of a computer that I didn't have with me!

Carbon Copy Cloner is used a lot, it is based on Unix tools that ship with Mac OS X and is basically just a graphic front end to a tool that Apple itself uses quite a lot. You would want to check the disk for errors before cloning though. CCC doesn't actually do any partioning and I have never used iPartion so I can't say how it works. But I've used CCC a ton and UCLA uses it in conjunction with other tools to create easy to restore systems, so it is pretty tried and true...

CCC is great and I can highly recommend it. iPartion is nearing the same recommendation. Earlier versions were a little buggy on some systems. But I've used it at the college and it does great on 10.3.5 I think you should be able to use it without any issue on a new OS, such as 10.3.5

Thanks, gentlemen for the astute, clear and well-turned responses. As I am an editor first (from the old three-point days) and a computer "guy" second, (which is becoming a rapid, if painful, learning curve), I have some done some investigations on these two apps, CCC and iPartition. It appears there is a generally positive feedback from users which mirrors your own feelings. And then there are those who are somewhat afraid of the unknown, and in ignorance are quite negative. And, of course, there are those for whom a bit of knowledge has presented a trove of (usually) self-imposed problems, such as losing data files altogether, lack of "bootability" or drive "damage."
As I am currently defining myself as both somewhat fearful and consummately ignorant, I have to again present my own list of equipment models and numbers for your educated rejoinders. I have a G4 Powerbook running OS 10.2.8, FCP 3 and a firewire 800 LaCie 250 Gig external drive. More importantly, I am in the midst of two important projects, which naturally I would prefer to leave in their current states. I am looking not for a guarantee, but some positive encouragement that if I follow the instructions (remember, I am a bone-head), that I have a better than reasonable chance of copying and transfering the data to the external drive, repartitioning (or un-partitioning) the internal Mac drive, reinstalling the apps and data and then having all of this work. Is this possible with either (or, from what I gather, perhaps both) of these programs?
I hope that this will be viewed less as whining than learning, although admittedly it smacks of whining, even to me.

My number one rule is never changes things during a project. I can almost guarantee you'll have some issues with some media files. If you want to create more work and misery for yourself (and I mean lots of misery) start changing your system and media files.

I second Jeff's advice - if at all possible, wait until you have enough time to deal with the inevitable glitches. You are courting disaster to do this under the gun in the middle of a big project.

If you are out of disk space and have to do something then you might try moving your FCP files but not messing with the PowerBook internal drive. This way you would also be creating a backup copy of your projects, and could go back to the version on the internal drive if there's a problem with the copy.

Use the finder to copy all your FCP files to the external drive. Copy the entire folder hierarchy where your project resides to the new drive. Unless you have specified somewhere else you will find all the files on your startup drive here:

/Users/[your username]/Documents/"Final Cut Pro Documents"

After copying everything to the external drive, startup FCP and use the preferences to set your scratch disk to the external drive (see my earlier message about "gotchas" when this drive is unavailable). Now open one of the projects you've copied to the new drive. It should complain about not finding render files and clips. You will need to reconnect these and show FCP where the new files are, and then you should be able to work on projects using the new drive. Now there is a chance that when you open the project on the external drive that it will continue to use render files from the internal disk. If so then it won't complain about not finding files. If you're afraid this is happening you could temporarily move the files on the internal drive to another folder and force FCP to reconnect.

When you work with an external drive as a scratch disk in FCP3 it creates the same folder hierarchy found in the above example at the root level of the drive. Just be sure to verify that all new render files and clips are indeed getting stored on the external drive.

But getting back to Jeff's advice, I wouldn't attempt any of this unless its absolutely necessary right now....

Okay, let's presume for the moment that I have completed my current projects and I am ready to re-partition the internal drive. I will add here that this partitioning was done with poor planning in the first place (with a tech person who is NOT a video person and was not aware of the enormous consumption that the "boot" or system partition would demand, particularly with DVD burning), and, indeed, as Mr. Ostroff suggested, I sit now with 707 MB available on this partition, several gigs shy of what I need to burn DVD's or even create bed and transition music (in GarageBand). This in itself is a workflow headache, as I do all of this myself.
However, as I said, let's presume I really am finished, projects laid to tape and archived. I religiously use the disk repair utility to repair the disks and to repair permissions. As it takes only a short while, I do this after every session. Is this what Mr. Sloan means by "check the disk for errors?" Or, is there some more technical, perhaps third-party utility for this? Also, as indicated by Mr. Ostroff, I am using the external disk currently for these two projects and I have had, (knock on titanium), no issues at all in the use of this system (even before the external disk was added). I did set the scratch disk for the LaCie and things are going well. However, I have not yet moved other projects there. I will attempt this today. What's next?
My hesitation is that I am not always certain how FCP finds all of the data necessary for smooth editing and playback (or for me to really know that I have moved the files or simply created an "alias," or link to the "original" files and I am concerned that this will be corrupted when I temporarily "move" the archived projects (which are of a type which clients regularly modify, update and "retool"). Some of these are broadcast commercials and others are "documercials." In any case, my few attempts at "reconnecting media" have had mixed results, leading me to re-capturing and re-rendering clips, music and so forth more often that not. I am beginning to see Mr. Donald's "misery" (or, worse, the "lots of misery) and I hesitate to go there.
Now. having said this, I am really uncertain that there will be a vacation or break time from my current and past projects as they are really never "finished" in the usual sense of this word. But, I am clearly out of space on the system partition and I need to realign these partitions for more complete and necessary work on music and DVD's. I feel I am on the sharp horns of a dilemma with no easy way out other than that long and lonely walk down Misery Boulevard.

I would make a cloned copy of my three partitions and put them on the larger, external drive. Repartition the drive and clone the info back to the new internal drives. Check you FCP projects and see how bad a shape your in. If it's not too bad burn you DVD's, and fix your projects. If it's real bad, just burn the DVD's you need to free up space and delete the original files you just burned. Partition the drive again just like it originally was and clone the files from the external drive back to their original partitions.

I agree, but if possible I'd suggest going one step further. Get a second external drive (you can never have too many.... I have 8!) and use it to clone your internal drive. This way you won't have to fragment or partition your other external drive, and you won't run any risk of interfering with the projects there.

I suppose that this is a logical solution in the short term, but it doesn't solve the more longterm issues of insufficient system headroom for workflow down the road. I am gathering that there is really no easy, certain or even recommended approach to this. I feel that I am requesting something arcane, mystical and that there is a fair amount of voodoo in the CCC and iPartition applications. I cannot imagine that I am the only one with this problem but I am getting that feeling...
Also, as I just saw Mr. Ostroff's reply and, while I would love to own many more, I am not in the economic position to buy another drive at this time (house remodeling is pinching these resources). And I was not planning to partition the external drive, though I presume in your comments that there is an inherent risk of "interference" in the seemingly broad landscape of 250 (now 210) gigs if I do not do so. Ouch, the more I search for answers, the more lost I become.

<<<-- Originally posted by Frank Meek : I cannot imagine that I am the only one with this problem but I am getting that feeling... -->>>

It sounds like your basic problem is that you should not have partitioned the internal drive. Most people just use the computer as it ships without multiple partitions and my experience is that this is best. But it's probably a lesson which must be learned the hard way. In my case, I got it out of the way some time ago in my experience with Unix/Linux servers as well as Macs. You inevitably end up with one partition that fills up while others have wasted space. The end result is inefficient use of the overall disk space. Now with today's larger disks this might be less of a problem, but I simply swore off multiple partitions on the same physical drive (except as mandated by the OS for swap disks, etc) and have not regretted it.

I know this stuff gets expensive, but I assume you also place some value on your time and data integrity as well? You don't need to get a particularly fancy/big/fast drive to backup your internal disk. Something like this (http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/detail.asp?dpno=131071) would do the trick. I've had one of these for over a year and only use it for backup of my internal drive, although I imagine it's fast enough to edit video. If you shop around you can probably find even cheaper ones... take a field trip to Best Buy.

Boyd,
You are correct and I admit falling for the hype given me by (as I mentioned in other posts) a non-video tech person, one who knows the unix underpinnings of the OS X system. His recommendation, while knowing little of the massive video storage needs (and was unbelieving when I first showed him these storages rates) was to protect the media and program files from what he perceived to be potential system failures. I have never experienced such failures and I consider this platform (despite some arrogant prejudice against Powerbooks as a reliable tool) to be solid and reliable. I have done thirty minute broadcast programming on it with only minor and (ultimately) insignificant sorts of problems, lost file links being one. But, these were probably user error, not the fault of the tool.
I certainly would have been better off to leave the internal disk alone...but that is not what current reality is...and I am attempting to correct these errors of judgment. I am discovering, to this end, the underworld of ghostly, insubstantial and apparently unreliable "fixes." I guess I am wishing for the best, hoping for the least and expecting the worst. Thanks for the link and I will probably go your suggested route.

Frank,

Just to be clear, there is no voodoo with CCC, it is an incredibly basic tool that simply copies a drive bit by bit basically, so it rarely (I would guess less than 1%) fails. The repartitioning on the fly has a bit more complexity (magic) to it, so there are technically more things that can go wrong. But really, with the programs mentioned you should have no problem reformatting your hard drive (disk utility has a Repair Disk function to check it as well).

The real problem you are going to face is that a lot of your programs (as of OS X) rely on the file path names to find the appropriate files. Technically you should be able to relink everything but as you know that does not always work out.

Good luck!

Hi there folks,
I wanted to update those who, like myself, might benefit from this corner of experience. I had a production break and decided to use the fine advice I received here. Also, I have a question for FCP 3 gurus who might have a workaround for a problem apparently peculiar to my edition of FCP 3...which is (for those unlucky colleagues who also are stuck with this odd edition),... FCP 3.02f1. It is this "f1" addendum which seems the issue when transferring files via the very cool "Carbon Copy Cloner," mentioned by Jeff and others in this thread.
I used that to move all of my files, apps and etc. to my 80G LaCie backup drive, purchased specifically for this on the recommendation of Boyd Ostroff. While he did not suggest this LaCie item, he was adamant about the benefits of a dedicated backup drive and its regular use.
Indeed, everything was moved by this highly intuitive utility and all looked good. Everything worked from the backup drive and I felt that I was ready to re-partition my G4 drive. I did so without iPartition primarily because my local computer whiz kid felt that there might be issues in the way this utility dealt with the unix underlayment in the apple world.
We erased the hard drive and I moved those files and apps I felt I needed back again, (I left the iLife packages as I wished to re-install these as some had serious issues.
But, all was not to be perfect as I found when I attempted to launch FCP in its new, remodeled home. The message which came up was "FCP requires a System ID file which is either missing or invalid". Apparently, not everything was moved by CCC!
I called Apple support...and then FCP support and they couldn't have been more helpful (and distressing)...this is, they indicated, unique to the aforementioned "f1" appended FCP 3.02. Also, this was the reason I was unable, some time ago when I attempted to do so, NOT to be able to upgrade to 3.04. This "f1" very special edition also prevents this. I found all of this in the tech sheet section in FCP.
I suppose that I didn't feel I was missing anything as my system worked flawlessly for years. But, as might be expected, I am certainly now missing FCP, my settings and preferences, and valuable time as I await Apple to send me a disk of 3.04 for installation. And, I have no idea whether my projects will be found or not. OUCH!
Any ideas for finding the System ID file? A workaround? Anything?

Here is probably where your problem happened "We erased the hard drive and I moved those files and apps I felt I needed back again"

When you moved the files back over you relied on the finder to copy everything over. This does not copy hidden files or restore any hidden preference files in the System Library folder. This ID or whatever could have been stored anywhere, and is probably somewhere on your CCC'd drive.

To make the CCC work, you have to use the tool to take your clone and copy it back over to the new disk. By selectively copying just portions you are bound to miss stuff.

Can't you simply reinstall from your original discs? What happened to them? What does the f1 mean? With your cloned drive can't you just boot off it and get work done? I'm not sure how you set it up, so I don't know if this is possible...

Mark
Yes, all the files were CCC'd back...except the iLife package, which should have nothing whatever to do with FCP. I didn't use the finder to do anything. The files were cloned to the 80G backup and then back again to the newly erased G4 drive.
To the question of what the "f1" means is beyond me and apparently beyond the tech folks at Apple...they, to their sales credit, were as interested in touting the upgrade to FCP4.5 as giving me all the answers, many of which went unanswered, the "f1" among them. The technical reports are in the support pages if you're interested...if I had the time, I would put them here, but I do not. I suspect that the "f1" was a very early version with some known bugs...one of which is the missing file ID even when attempting to upgrade to 3.4, the last before the new iteration. As I said, the tech papers admitted this and the folks at Apple said as much when they sent me to the tech paper section of the website.
And, indeed, I have the original disk, yet this version (with "f1") has some issues, while unbeknownst to me during the past years. The 3.4 version that they're sending me is the preferred alternative here, even though I have never used this version.
Let me say that the FCP staff knew when I mentioned my version that there was a problem or two...no hesitation about getting my address to send me the newer install disk. That is what I now await.
And, to the booting from the backup...I checked this before I erased and all was good...I even did work on my last project in this mode...however, as soon as I erased the G4 drive I had the missing file ID message...on both drives...go figure. But, not to beat a dead horse, the Apple guys didn't even break stride when I gave them the version info and registration number...but they declined to give details...nobody wants to talk about mistakes and bugs, let alone fixes to an "unsupported version."

Hm. I guess when you recreated your OS it wiped the ID number you were looking for. Sorry it hasn't gone smoothly!