Formatting A Hard Drive, To format or not? Options

[Foxyphil]

Emac G4 . 1.25 Ghz. 770 ram. 80Gb hard drive. Focusrite saffire with bundled cubase le.

Ive concluded that I cant record many tracks with this set up - which amazes me but anyways - I am going to get an external hard drive (300gb).

My question, to anyone kind enough to give feedback, is this. Should I have the hard disk formatted to osX? The company will do this for free, possibly partition the disk as well. I know nothing about this stuff, but recall reading on site that it s best NOT to format the drive.

If possible, I want to use BFD drums, and waves plug ins. Im happy to commit stuff to audio. "Running 12 instances" of anything seems impossible anyway. But should I get this drive formatted (mac is running Panther), or hold fire on that?

Once again any feedback greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Phil

[cornutt]

Also, it wouldn't be a bad idea to install a system on the external drive while you're at it. That way, you can boot from it if your internal drive ever dies. If you do, you want that in a separate partition. I think 15G would cover it for a minimal OS install and some recovery tools.