what is taking up hard drive space?

ok, i see. The usual partition is just 1.

And I think i know what "write to zero" means.

My final 2 questions are: Should the old, sluggish HD be in the bottom bay, and the new drive in the top?

I read that this is how i should have it, but when I have it this way, disk utility won't read the new drive.

Also, once i'm ready to format the new drive, do i need to go to the "Erase" tab in disk utilities and click "erase", or can i go right to the "Partition" tab?

thanks!

woops, i sent the last message before i read your last few posts.

Ok, understood on all points.

I will erase and "write to zero" first.

I will then partition just 1.

And the only way i could get the new drive to be read by disk utility was to have it in the bottom bay, and the older drive in the top bay, contrary to what I read.

So, i'm going with it like this....

Time to erase and format.

After that, I will use Carbon Copy and try and clone the old HD and try and put it onto the new one(do i somehow separate the actual OS so that it gets installed onto the new HD separately, or do I just clone the entire HD?)

Thanks so much!!!

Ramon, thank you so much for your help.

I got the new hard drive. The only way the computer would read both drives was if I put the new drive in the bottom bay, and the old one in the top.

And so i used CCC to clone the sluggish old drive to the new one. It took like 48 hours to copy 140GB.

But I re-booted from the new drive, and it works great.

Now, I think that I should move the new drive into the top bay(A), and remove the old one completely.

I'm doing that now...

hmm....i did that and now i get the folder with the question mark.

I guess i should have first selected my start up drive in my system prefs before powering down and moving hard drives. (but would that work since i am moving hard drive bays?)

Anyway, I once again put the old hard drive in, and swapped bays, and although this is the configuration which had it working perfectly, (it would boot from the new HD, and work great), now suddenly, it is booting from the old one, and taking forever.

So confusing.

Anyway, i'll figure it out.....

it seems like this computer will only boot up with both hard drives installed, with the old one in the top bay(A), and the new one in the bottom bay(B). But at least it boots up from the new one. Not sure how i got it to do that, but at least it's running off the new drive, and works great.

Yet, that apple store genius told me that i should probably remove the old drive because it will cause problems.

Do both drives run together? If it's booting off the new drive, doesn't that mean that the old drive is not being used at all? (but then, why would the computer not run unless both drives are installed)

A bit confused still. Looking forward to being done with this mission.....

=)

Yes, Aqua, it does. Or at least it DID. But now, i'm trying to keep the old drive completely out of the machine, since it's not needed, and since it is not working properly.

The problem is that when I removed the old drive, and then moved the new drive into the top bay(A), it wouldn't boot. I got the question mark folder.

The interesting part is that when I first bought the new drive, and installed it (the old drive was still in), i got the flashing globe icon, then that went away after a few minutes, followed by the flashing question mark folder icon, but then that went away after a few more minutes, and the computer found the bootable drive on it's own, and booted up.

I figured that would happen this time too, but when I only have the new HD in the computer (the old HD removed completely), i just get the flashing question mark forever.

hmm....

oh, and i did try and boot up holding down the Option key, with only the new HD in the machine, but no drive showed up on the screen. Just the forward, and back arrows. No HD icon in the middle.

don't think we discussed jumpers. The odd thing is that with both drives in (the old one in the primary top "A" bay, and the new one in the bottom "B" bay), the machine runs great. And i can hear the new drive working. (it sounds different than old drive)

i know, this thread is super long now. Sorry guys.

Maybe I'll start a new discussion about why after cloning my drive, the machine will only boot up with either the old drive in by itself, or the new drive in one bay along with the old drive in the 2nd bay but being run by the new drive(cause i can hear it work)....

the new drive is WD, as you guessed. The old drive is Maxtor, which i believe was the stock drive that came with the G5.

Honestly, I don't know how to do this jumper thing. When you say "pins", you mean the pins that the G5 connectors go to on the hard drive? The pins don't look numbered, but I guess they go left to right? There are 2 sections with pins. One has 15 pins, and the smaller one has 7pins.

What do I use to jump with? bare wire with allegator clips on the ends? (sorry, I just don't know )

I still have so many questions as you can see.

I can just research this online...

You guys have helped so much....