LaCie 301273 User Manual - page 15
LaCie Little Disk
• Design by Sam Hecht
User Manual
page 15
Formatting and Partitioning
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What is Formatting?
When a disk is formatted, the following things occur:
the operating system erases all of the bookkeeping infor-
mation on the disk, tests the disk to make sure that all of
the sectors are reliable, marks bad sectors (i.e., those that
are scratched) and creates internal address tables that it
later uses to locate information. Your LaCie Hard Drive is
preformatted in FAT-32 (MSDOS) format. To reformat
your drive, follow the instructions in this section.
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What is Partitioning?
You can also divide the hard drive into sections, called
partitions. A partition is a section of the hard drive’s sto-
rage capacity that is created to contain files and data. For
instance, you could create three partitions on your drive:
one partition for your office documents, one as a back-
up and one for your multimedia files. Or, if you will be
sharing the drive with another person in your household
or office, you can create a partition for each person who
uses the drive. Partitioning is optional.
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File System Formats
There are three different file system format catego-
ries: NTFS, FAT 32 (MS-DOS), and Mac OS Exten-
ded (HFS+). See the table, right, for more information.
Once you’ve connected your drive and it is recogni-
zed by your operating system (i.e. Windows or Mac OS
X), you are ready to format and partition the drive. In
order to store information on a hard drive, it must have
a file system and be divided into sections that will con-
tain the data you wish to store. This process is called
formatting.
IMPORTANT INFO:
Reformatting will erase
everything from the hard drive. If you have infor-
mation that you want to protect or continue to use,
back up this information before reformatting.
3. Formatting and Partitioning
Use NTFS if...
...you will be using the drive only with Windows
2000 or Windows XP (performance will generally
be greater when compared to FAT 32). This file
system is compatible in read only mode with Mac
OS 10.3 and higher.
Use HFS+ if...
...you will be using the drive on Macs only; perfor-
mance will generally be greater when compared to
FAT 32. This file system is NOT compatible with
Windows OS.
Use FAT 32 (MS-DOS) if...
...you will be using your drive with both Windows
and Mac OS 9.x or 10.x or sharing the drive bet-
ween Windows 2000, XP, and 98 SE. Maximum
single file size is 4GB.
TECHNICAL INFORMATION:
The LaCie
hard drive is preformatted in FAT-32 (MS-DOS)
format, optimized for use with Mac and Windows
OS. See File System Formats, below for explana-
tions of the other possible file formats.