Guide to Create a Portable External FireWire Drive for Mac OS 9 w/ Partitioning

[IIO]

i am not diehard but you re looking for firewire 400 to firewire 800 cable, also known s 9pin to 4pin. then you format the drive from OSX, turn the OS9 dirvers option ON and make at least two partitions, one smaller than 190 mb. that is where you put OS9 onto.

[DieHard]

Hey diehard,

I bought a 1 TB OWC NOTEBOOK SSD FIREWIRE drive today, along with the fancy clear case, and am ready to partition the thing, and install the OS 9 operating system in my G4 933 kHz mac, but I am confused as to which cables I am going to hook to in my computer, and which adapter I need. I have a sonnet DUAL SATA CARD installed in the PCI SLOT and I have 2 drives running off of the card, and another 3 drives being powered by the stock IDE cables that came with the computer. Where exactly do I plug this drive in? I bought the case you recommended, but I cannot figure out which cable to hook it too, and therefore, I am not sure which Adapter I need either. Do I even need an adapter? My sonnet card has two SATA drives, with SATA cables hooked to it. bb

Well I am still unsure of the goal.  Normally, you would put 1 SSD Internal via a SATA card or PATA/IDE Adapter to boot, run the OS, and apps for speed; I am now guessing you want to do all that using a FW drive, which is doable also... 

[billyboy]

Hey guys

I have been dormant on the G4 for 5 years now and it is unreal how much knowledge i have forgotten. If u dont use it u lose it!
A year or so ago I had a drive crash in Cubase that had over a hundred songs on it. It crashed when I was defragging it and before you ask... yes the partitions were less than 190 gigs... Thank God I had it backed up I'll be honest the main reason I went with the SSD drive is to not have to defrag my drives any longer and to be able to use larger petitions to store my musicon... 30 years is a long time recording creative song works and it's an ill feeling waking up everyday knowing that all of your work could be gone in a puff of smoke. I realize that the mechanical disc drives are far cheaper but just having the ability to not defrag is worth the price difference! If this SSD works I will buy a second drive 4 my Quicksilver.

Since I started researching this subject here i accumulated a list of the terms in the among the computer Gurus i have questioned  while investigating this storage dilemma... here is the list There are SATA ,IDE,HD, SSD, FIREWIRE 400, FIREWIRE 800, USB1&2,SONNET CARDS WITH SATA , DESKTOP DRIVES, NOTEBOOK DRIVES, dozens of adapters Not to mention all the quirks and little glitches you have to remember to even run cubase OS 9.2.2

Die Hard in your article alone there were probably a dozen different references to what kinds of adapters drives and other info I would need to know how to accomplish this!

Anyhow I digress

One of one of the things I can understand is why I need one partition on this fire rod wire drive to be bootable and secondly should I place this drive in the G4 in its little case or as an external drive I store right next to the G4. The first priority for me is to have solid backup that doesn't need defragging. secondly if it will boot it would be nice to just drop and drag the files on i lose on a crashed mechanical Drive of the G4 when that drive has crashed. I have wondered however if I actually could run Cubase on this SSD drive or would it not be fast enough. That brings us to efficiency and stability I have noticed little glitches and changes in automation after my computer has sat stored for a while. I have heard that the SSD drives are far more stable and don't have as much data corruption as the mechanical drives

So to sum it up 30 years of work and the benefit of stability and not having to defrag partitions make the twelve to fifteen hundred dollar investment not really seem that bad of a deal. And once again , thanks you guys for taking the time to discuss these perplexing problems we encounter. BB

[DieHard]

The first priority for me is to have solid backup that doesn't need defragging. secondly if it will boot it would be nice to just drop and drag the files on i lose on a crashed mechanical Drive of the G4 when that drive has crashed. I have wondered however if I actually could run Cubase on this SSD drive or would it not be fast enough. That brings us to efficiency and stability I have noticed little glitches and changes in automation after my computer has sat stored for a while. I have heard that the SSD drives are far more stable and don't have as much data corruption as the mechanical drives

OK, that helps a little...
1) The SSD via firewire will certainly be fast enough for any DAW in the OS 9 arena; many used to run FW Glyph and other drives (mechanical in rack mount cases) and OWC Raid units in Rack mount FW cases running both the OS and audio data volumes, so yes, it is No problem.  In the G4 world you will need an external case with FW400 or a FW800 port and you can use the popular FW400 to 800 cable or an adapter (No FW800 in Mac os9); it will simple put the 800 port down to 400.
2) if you want the "disaster recovery" boot off the FW drive, then make the 1st partition on the SSD 190GB or less, the rest can be as large as you want for volume 2, use our apple ASR program to make a perfect image or your DAW and restore it to the 1st partition of the FW to keep all authorizations for plugins intact
3) Use the drive setup 1.9 as we have discussed at length here to partition and format the external so you don't end up with 1 big partition
4) make sure you backup data, even on the SSD, they fail all the time and are NOT as perfect as they sound, I have seen many SSDs die in less than 24 months, there are many OWC and other boxes that are both RAID 1 (mirror) and Firewire, they take notebook hard drives or SSDs, that is what you really want if you do NOT want to be a slave to backups and dragging crap around
NEWER TECH: Guardian Maximus mini is very dood for the price (maxes out at 1TB mechanical or SSD drives)
I am looking at 5 on the shelf; these fuckers are small and fit in the palm of your hand !
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/GM8QM7S10T32/?gclid=CjwKCAjwyMfZBRAXEiwA-R3gM4uWw9MWToZL-DL8ix5wbJeyaIKScyvDaAH17A6axoU3vufQdqHMJBoC3LUQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Amazing SAVE $50 !!!! The RAW Empty enclosure is down to $49 !!!!!
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/GMM8QKIT0GB/

My other favorite is the OWC dual Mini firewire (all metal) but bigger than the Guardian, both are excellent, both do hardware RAID, both have FW400 (but check the OWC model since they sell mutiple models with different ports)

[IIO]

i am also not sure about your aim. if you have 2 IDE ports and 2 SATA ports in your computer, so you only need to usse firewire when you need a fifth (or higher) drive.

for important backups for example i use my second IDE HD.

everything external is left for jobs which aren´t daily jobs.

[billyboy]

Can somebody tell me how to run the 1.9.2 drive setup? I downloaded it (from the post above) but cannot get the drive setup window to open? It tells me that the original program is not available.

[IIO]

seems you have bad luck again

your OS obviously think that you tried to launch an alias.

if it doesnt go away after rebooting, try -> rebuilding the desktop DB.

[billyboy]

Hey IIO,

Doesn't work. I have never had so many problems partitioning a drive. I downloaded the file and it doesn't work. Do you know where I can get a startup disk that has disk setup 1.9.2. The file looks weird... like a windows file or something. I need to find a apple startup disk that has it - 0S 8.6 maybe? just gonna take some searching... thanks IIO.

[FdB]

Hey billyboy,

Try this attachment (from Mac mini OS 9 Install CD, via iMac running El Crapitan).
If for some reason this does not work / or make the journey, 1.9.2 is also available
with The Mactron Rescue/Disk Repair/Install disk here:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,1654.0.html

...Or my personal favorite:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,1657.0.html

[billyboy]

thanks fury...

When I downloaded the file, it said that it could not find the application program that created the document "drive setup 1.9.2". I am usinbg classilla for my internet, and i am lucky to even have it running... heh heh heh!

[FdB]

Well maybe try the 2nd MacTron download noted
above and see if that will be better/easier for you?

Someone had posted and attached the solo 1.9.2 file
previously, but I can't seem to locate that at present.

Best of luck.

[billyboy]

hey fury... I am lost here, and am NOT a guru with this stuff - as you can definitely tell by my responses. I can run cubase 5.1 and do some basic recording, however... I am wanting to partition a guardian maximus mini raid mirrored dual 1 TB drive for a backup drive, and load the free software of Cubase 5.1 free DAW package onto the first partition [the free download that diehard did]. I was going to build my own drive in the mini template, and use a sata adapter that diehard recommended above, but then I saw this download which would make it possible to partition the mini firewire drive without the hassle. What a clusterfuck. The further I go, the more complex it gets not to mention that I don't even know if the disk setup 1.9.2 even works for partitioning the firewire device. Can you tell me what adapter I need to connect the mini drive manually, internally to my G4 to partition it in OS 9, and what hooks to what inside. Diehard shows pictures of two adapters, but that doesn't make me know where to hook it up in my G4.

[FdB]

Sent you a PM.

[billyboy]

Thanks fury...

Hey... I changed my mind about the ssd drive and ordered the dual 1tb striped guardian maximus mini backup. Hey has anybody here used this in OS 9? I cannot see how it can impliment raid software,  WITHOUT EXPOSING OUR OS 9 FILES to various OSX friendly software? The software that keeps tabs on and stripes the data is OSX...I THINK! OWC said it works in OS9, or they will refund. Looks like I'm in for an exhilarating weekend of computer programming, anyhow.

I gave up on the disk setup version 1.9.2. Instead, I ordered a  SATA  to IDE adapter, and I am just gonna go fur it... mannually set up partitions, and then hook it up with FireWire.

[IIO]

dont overcomplicate things.

if you have bought a raid enclosure, you dont need to do anything with software based raid.

connect it to the computer (and for OS9: reboot) and it will work.

if you waant to bott from OS, you need one partition not bigger thn 190, otherwise it is reecommended to mke prtitions of 500 gb. but it will work with 1 or 2 terabyte volumes, too.

since  - in my opinion - striping is overkill for firewire 400 (because one hrddisk is alredy fasteer than this connection type) i would turn off raid (if the enclosure allows that) and use it as 2 1 terabyte disks.

[mrhappy]

Amazing SAVE $50 !!!! The RAW Empty enclosure is down to $49 !!!!!
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/GMM8QKIT0GB/

Couldn't resist so I ordered a few of these!

[billyboy]

My question is this, IIO...

In order to boot from OS 9 from the enclosure (for emergencies), you have to initialize the two mini drives, in order to initialize them and partition them correctly). It says so in the pdf manual. They told me that it will work with OS 9, but I don't see how, because it uses OSX software to index the files, no matter what you do. So even if i set up and partition the mini maximus, it will still use OSX to handle the files when they get to the mini. I do not want OSX software anywhere near my song storage files. They told me when I purchased  it that it would run in OS9 (just as their ad told me), but when I asked about the way the machine indexes and stores the files, they kept ignoring the fact that OSX files were going to be used by the mini for indexing the drives.Truth be known, they don't give a flying fuck about what happens to those files, but then they didn't spend the last 25 years recording them, I did! I read their ad on their site, and it says it is OS 9.2.2 compatible, but then I read the pdf, and got another story. They lied, or at best... they don't know. I do know this one thing...I won't use my cubase files to experiment with using their OSX  hardware. They need to take the ad off their site.

I will not stop until I find out the best way to store these song files... but this I do know, they will not be placed anywhere near OSX hardware. I know that a lot of people think that OSX will not hurt these files, but I will not risk it.

[billyboy]

One other thing... all the enclosed software disks, as well as the software preloaded on the mini itself, are OSX, and to this very hour, no OWC employee, or tech support has given me any explanation as to what the 9.2.2 compatibility ad claim on their site is referring to! 9.2.2 is never even mentioned in their pdf user manual! And then there is this...

They told me to use the OSX software to partition and when needed, to defrag the drives. How can OSX software defrag OS9 files, and furthermore, why is an OSX drive needing defragging to begin with? Wasn't that one of the reasons for OSX... the need to defrag was now over because of the advanced indexing of X over 9?

[IIO]

because it uses OSX software to index the files, no matter what you do.

what does that mean... using software to index the files.

a harddrive is a harddrive. it does not need to "index" anything.

So even if i set up and partition the mini maximus, it will still use OSX to handle the files when they get to the mini.

what does that mean... to handle the files. in OS9, OS9 does that.

and it says it is OS 9.2.2 compatible

i have never heard of a firewire enclosure or of mechanical harddisks which would not "work with OS9".

except when it is bigger than 2 terabytes.

I know that a lot of people think that OSX will not hurt these files, but I will not risk it.

if you have 3 copies of all important data, and know what kind of thing to avoid (i.e. journalled option, norton disk destroyer)  you can use drives with different OS without problems.

you just have to avoid 10.14 because it might change the data structure if you press the wrong button.

but to comme bck to the original problem: if you want to find out how it works, you should g ive us some feedback about what you have been doing until now:

what happens if you connect the disk to your OS9 computer?

are you using the raid functionality of the case you bought or not?

are you sure the harddisks are ok? or could they be broken? have you been using them before?

have you tried yet to format it in OS9? or in OSX? what happens if you do so?

[IIO]

above you were talking about striping. that maximus thing does not support this raid mode.