LaCie d2 SAFE Hard Drive
User Manual
page
Formatting Your d2 SAFE
7. Formatting Your LaCie d2 SAFE Hard Drive
TeChNICAl NOTe:
FAT 32
(MS-DOS) is
recommended for sharing a hard drive with Win-
dows and Mac OS users. However keep in mind
that the FAT 32 format will slow down your hard
drive and single file size is limited to 4 GB.
When your SAFE Hard Drive is initialized (see step
5 on page 26) it is formatted for your operating sys-
tem. Your SAFE Hard Drive is is formatted in HFS+
if connected to a Mac, or in NTFS if connected to a
Windows computer. If you would like to use your SAFE
Hard Drive with both types of operating systems, you
will have to reformat your drive to FAT 32.
What is Formatting?
When a disk is formatted, the following things oc-
cur: the operating system erases all of the bookkeeping
information 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. The LaCie
Setup Assistant formatted your drive for you automati-
cally the first time you used it. To reformat your drive,
follow the instructions in this section.
About Partitioning the d2 SAFE Hard Drive
For technical reasons, the d2 SAFE Hard Driveap-
pears as a removable media reader on Windows com-
puters. Windows does not support partitioning of re-
movable media.
Mac users can divide the hard drive into sections,
called partitions. A partition is a section of the hard
drive’s storage 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 backup and one for your multimedia files.
■
■
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 be-
tween Windows 2000, XP, and 98 SE. Maximum
single file size is 4GB.
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.
File System Formats
There are three different file system format catego-
ries: NTFS, FAT 32 (MS-DOS), and Mac OS Extend-
ed (HFS+). See the table below for more information.
■
