Multiple Hard-drive Help - Mac Pro -

[Ganstavoo]

Hello all,
I recently purchased a Mac Pro off eBay. My Mac Pro has 4 Hard-Drives on it.

4 - SATA Hard Disc Drives - Drives 1,2 & 3 250GB each and Drive 4 is 750GB

I have uploaded three screenshots. One of my "system profiler", one of my desktop, And one of the dashboard app - iStats Pro.

The current OS is Tiger.

THE QUESTIONS: Why is it only showing up 3 Hard drives? (Archive, Backup, Goodwill) [The Iomega is my external so it doesn't count as the 4)

Also, I am a video major, along with photographer as a freelance job. MY question is. How would you guys suggest I work around my 4 Hard-Drives for storage?

Should I have 1 drive dedicated to only software (installs) if so which one?
How would you suggest saving content on the other drives?
example: 1 drive for video, 1 drive for photo, 1 drive for audio.. ect ect ect.

or one for backup, if so which one?

I am sorry for all these questions. I am very familiar with what i do experience wise, and I know how to work my way around macs i love them) BUT this is my first experience with multiple Hard-Drives.

Please take note that it says i have 4 HDDs but in the other 2 screenshots i supplied it only shows 2 This is probably something simple and stupid but Its a brain buster for me.

 

[bld44]

the drive not showing is formatted, right?

 

[Ganstavoo]

How do I check?

 

[tomllama]

Look at what Disk Utility says (to see if it is formatted).

The attached screen shots are too small to read, but another way the drive 'count' can be off is if the previous owner set a couple up as a software RAID (that would show up in Disk Utility and you could see it because the drive size would not correspond to the physical disk size).

 

[dr. shdw]

You should get SL btw.

 

[frimple]

You should get SL btw.

Might be PPC.

 

[Ganstavoo]

Hey yes thank you! one is set up as raid. the one that is labeled goodwill.

What is the RAID drive for? what is it there for? should I keep it set up as raid? or should I have it set up as just a basic storage device for my needs as a described before.

 

[tomllama]

Look at the list of forums above this one. You'll see 'Mac Basics and Help'. If you explore it, it will provide a lot of the background you need to understand the computer you just bought. A Google search on Mac RAID is a good place to start learning about what a RAID is and why it can be a good thing (and why it might not be a good thing for you).

 

[dr. shdw]

Might be PPC.

PPC Mac Pro?