Powerbook G4/pro Tools/external Hard Drives, Newbie help Options

[jawnzap7]

First I just wanna say thanks to everybody on this site. I just joined but, have already learned a ton just from poking around. It seems as if everybody here is very patient, and informative...now that the requisite ass-kissing is over , lets get down to business...
So I just recieved my 15 inch Powerbook G4. It's a 1.67 Ghz model, with 2 Gb of Ram, and a 100 Gb 7200 rpm Hard Drive. I am currently awaiting my M Box2 (factory bundle) with Pro Tools, via UPS.
I have read the documentation on the digidesign website, and have read that it is strongly suggested to get an external/additional hard drive, instead of using the internal boot drive. But is it necessary? I got the larger internal drive hoping that it might be sufficient. If not I can live with that. I'll spend the money if I must.
So my next question is this...is pro tools compatible with usb 2.0 external Hard drives? Or can you ONLY use firewire/sata/whatever else they list drives. The usb 2.o's are cheaper for more storage than the firewire models. But I definently believe you get what you pay for.
And what about internal drives placed in shells? That seems to be the cheapest/most economical option, but I don't know nothing about that stuff. Is it hard to do?...what is my best strategy here?

[lepetitmartien]

There should be only two connection right, one is the IDE ribbon, the other is the powering.

Jumpers are tiny bits at the back near the other connectors, they enable options on the drive. They usually come by one or two on a few pins. From what you wrote, you found them. Cable select is not supported on macs, now enclosures are a little bt different, now… to be sure, set it as master on (an IDE/ATA drive can only be master or slave, one of both at most per chain, and cable select is a PC automatic sensing based on the position of the drive by the connector when there two connectors).

As a side note, the normal position of a master in a 2 drives chain is at the end of the ribbon, slave is at the middle connector.

So put the little jumper at its master on position. Otherwise it can work without fuss, but we are on the virgin territories of the unknown so better avoid it.

HFS+ is the type of formating, on Mac OS it's been HFS and HFS+, use HFS+. Other formats types are UNIX or windows only and will bring you issues as they are aimed at special uses on the mac not of interest here.

You'll have to choose if you want to partition the drive too.