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First off why not just leave your start up disk the way it is and just use the new HD as second drive. However if you really want to do it the easy thing to do is to install the OS on the new drive and then use the data migration that is available before you create a user account on the new OS.

You cannot do this through USB because you cannot boot from a USB drive. So you will ether have to get a firewire enclosure or have both your old system drive and new system drive connected to the internal connections.

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what format was your camera set to record at on to the P2 cards

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I’m going to say the same thing you were told on the HDV forum, the only way to know for sure is to rest one and test it in the conditions you will be using it under. That will also let you see how a HDV workflow would work for you.

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have you tried trashing your preferences

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is it an internal drive or an external drive, if it is an external drive then the drive it self may have a built in feature that spins the drive down when not in use.

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no problem

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Are you saying not to do only video or processor intensive programs off of ther HD?

First off the one of the reasons I think that you have been confusing to us is that you seen to to refer to your system drive as just HD, yes it is a Hard Drive, but so are your media drives. HD is just a generic turn for hard drive.with out saying what that drive is used for can lead to confusion.

Like your last question about running processor intensive programs off of the HD. Any program must be run from a hard drive. Programs should be installed onto your system drive. Because the system drive is already running the OS and applications, it has plenty do do already. Whenever you are using large files like video or any other large media files for example, will require using them from a second hard drive or a media drive. This is because the a hard drive needs to work a little more to access large files like these, this is fine if all that drive is doing is accessing the large media files, however if you combine that with the work a hard drive must do to run the OS and applications, is just to much to ask one drive to do by itself.

This is why you should be using a separate media drive, and not your system drive for large media files.

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if the drive is partitioned then it is still the same physical drive, and it is still not good to edit from the same drive that the OS and applications are on even if it is partitioned. You are still asking the same physical drive to do more work then it can handle.

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“I have about 13 gigs of free space on the internal drive, working from digitized clips on the same drive.”

NEVER edit video from the same drive as your system. The drive used for the OS and applications already have enough to do. Use separate drives for your media.

Also haw big is your drive, ALWAYS leave at least 10-15% of any hard drive unused.

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You would have to install Windows onto the machine. If you are working with final cut pro (FCP), why not stick with that. In my opinion FCP is much better then ether vegas, or premiere. Personally I would at least get an iMac if not a Mac Pro for video, but if you really want a mini then maybe look into getting Final Cut Express instead of FCP