Illegal Use of a Macrosystem Backup Drive

[johnneumann]

I know this question is way off the charts, but I need to ask anyway.

I only use my Kron once every now and then, but even as rarely as I do use it, I would love to have the new firewire backup hard drive. MS sales tells me all I need to do is upgrade to OS6 and it will work on my old Kron. Very cool.

So I'm only on this thing a few times a year and once a project is burned to DVD, I no longer need backup.

I also own a Mac laptop with a firewire jack. Can I reformat the drive to work as a Mac drive in the off season and then reformat it back to work with the Kron whenever the mood strikes?

-JOHN

[chetdavis]

Hello John,

Your thread title makes it sound like MSUS is out to 'catch' you doing something illicit...
Probably get a lot of lurkers that way!

You can use one of the compatible LaCie external HDDs with your Casablanca as well as a PC/Mac. We do not recommend it as there may be issues with programming the device to be dually compatible.

There is a thread on this forum here viewtopic.php?f=14&t=95&p=481&hilit=fat32#p481 where the topic of formatting an external HDD is covered.

Regards,
Chet

[johnneumann]

Thank you, Chet. Before I get too deep into this thing, I want to make sure I've been steered right on my ability to use an external hard drive with my Kron. I have an old Kron, one of the first, and I plan to upgrade the OS shortly to the latest greatest. Yes, it has a firewire jack on the back.

Is this all that's needed to use a Lacie (or MS) external hard drive?

I ask because the last time I was in the conversation (about two years ago) there was no such thing as an external hard drive that would work with the Kron.

Has that all changed?

-JOHN

[CKNewman]

I don't know where your Kron stands now, but you will need 256 megs of RAM to run Smart Edit 8 if you haven't upgraded already. The memory sticks were available from MSUS for around $80 plus S+H.

[johnneumann]

Thanks, Craig.

So if I understand this correctly, even my ancient Kron will run OS 8 well as along as I have 256 megs of memory.

And if I have OS 8 and 256 megs of memory, my old Kron will run the external drive properly.

That's all I need?

And all this new stuff won't tax my system to the point where everything will run like molasses?

-JOHN

[johnneumann]

I just swapped out the DVD burner on my Kron and I noticed that the big bracket that holds my Seagate 80 gig hard drive seems to be made to house TWO hard drives, one on top of the other.

Can I just add a second internal hard drive for backup purposes? Does it work that way?

-JOHN

[TimKennelly]

John,

Actually, it is probably better than what you are proposing.

The approved Lacie's come ready out of the box to be used as an external drive for both the MSUS two external firewire drive backup options, "DV" and "DV Backup" and for use with a Mac.

I do not believe there is any reason to have to reformat the drive in between using it with the Kron and Mac.

There are some shortcomings/limitations to the two MSUS backup options that I would like to see improved, but compatibility, yes, your Kron can do with one of the more recent OS versions and the minimum ram qualification.

[johnneumann]

Very good news, Tim. Thank you for the insight.

Much appreciated.

-JOHN