Acomdata HD250FPMM-72, User Manual

Page: 17 / 51

- 32 - - 33 -
Formatting Options for Cross-Platform Compatibility
If you ever need to re-format your mini Pal and you need both PC and Mac
compatibility, you have two options:
1. Format the mini Pal on a PC running Windows 98SE or Me with the FAT32
file system.
2. Format the mini Pal on Mac OS X v.10.3 or later with the MS-DOS file sys-
tem. The MS-DOS files system is the equivalent of FAT32 on the PC.
Mac OS 10.2 Users:
Hard drives or drive partitions that are larger than 128 GB and formatted with
the FAT32/MS DOS file system will not mount on Mac OS 10.2 through 10.2.8.
If your mini Pal’s drive capacity is larger than 128 GB, and you are using Mac
OS 10.2, you have several options to deal with this issue:
1) Re-format the mini Pal using the Mac OS Extended file system;
2) Partition the mini Pal so that no single partition is larger than 128 GB;
3) Upgrade to Mac OS 10.3 or later. For more information, go to http://docs.
info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107483 on the Apple web site.
Users of Mac OS X v.10.3 and later:
If you connect an NTFS-formatted disk to a Mac running Mac OS X v.10.3 or
later, the computer will be able to read the Mac-compatible files, but you will
not be able to save any data to the disk.
Formatting mini Pal
in Windows XP or 2000
1. Disable any anti-virus software you may have running in the background.
2. Double-click on My Computer/Explorer. In the My Computer/Explorer win-
dow you should see the icon/letter for the mini Pal (labeled “External’). If
you are not sure which icon represents the mini Pal, unmount and turn off
the mini Pal to see which one of the icons disappears. Then turn on the
mini Pal and wait for the icon to reappear.
3. Right-click on the mini Pal letter/icon and select Format… in the pop-up
menu. The Format dialog box will appear.
4. Under Capacity, verify the capacity. It should be close to the stated capacity
of your mini Pal in Gigabytes.
5. In the File System pop-up menu, select NTFS. Do not select FAT32 as you
cannot format the mini Pal using FAT32 file on Windows 2000 or XP.
6. In the Allocation unit size pop up, select “Default allocation size.”
6. In the Volume label field, type in a name for your mini Pal. You should give
the mini Pal a unique name that will allow you to easily distinguish it from
other hard drives or storage devices connected to your computer.
7. The default formatting option is Full format; you can also select Quick
Format. A Full format will take about 30-90 minutes. A Quick format will
take just a few minutes, but will do less verification than a Full format will.
Do not check Enable Compression.
8. Click Start. Once the format process is complete, the mini Pal will be ready
to use.