Fantom Drives G-Force Megadisk Quick Start Installation Manual - page 8
7
8
Formatting the drive in
Windows Hosts
1. Open the disk management console. A list of the attached
drives and their respective volumes will appear. Select the G-Force
Megadisk Black Disk.
The Disk Management Console can be accessed by right-
clicking on the "My Computer" icon (
) and selecting
"Manage" from the drop down menu. Disk Management
is found under "Storage" in the resultant window. For an
illustrated guide, please see
http://www.fantomdrives.com/helpdesk/faq
2. Right-click on the drive letter and select Format in the pop-up
menu. The Format dialog box will appear.
If the hard disk is not signed for use, the New Partition option
is unavailable (superimposed no-entry icon). In this case a
signature can be written on the hard drive by right clicking on
the disk description window and selecting "Initialize Disk".
3. Under Capacity, verify the drive capacity. It should be close to
the stated capacity of your drive in gigabytes.
4. In the File System pop-up menu,
select NTFS. The default formatting
option is full format. A full format
will fully verify the disk media. A
Quick format is quick, but will do
less verifying of the drive than a full
format. Click Start. Once the format process is complete, your
external hard drive is ready to use.
Optimizing Windows Caching Algorithm
By default, Windows XP optimizes caching for performance on
external drives. Windows Vista and 7 optimize caching for quick
removal. As a result, Windows XP appears to have faster
access to external disks but at a greater risk of data corruption
and loss. To change Windows' caching algorithm, open the disk
management console (as
described on page 8) on
your system drive. A list of
the attached drives and
their respective volumes
will appear. Right-click on
the Fantom external disk
in the disk list and select
properties. Select the
Policies Tab near the top
left of the window, and
click your desired
optimization level. press
OK when finished, and you
may close the disk
management applet.
Optimizing for performance can greatly enhance the
throughput of your disk but is much more vulnerable to
data loss! Make sure to have appropriate backup strategies
before enabling this feature!