LaCie LaCinema Premier
User Manual
page 33
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.
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. Maximum single file size is
not limited.
Use FAT 32 (MS-DOS) if...
...you will be using your drive with both Win-
dows and Mac OS 9.x or 10.x or sharing the drive
between Windows 2000, XP or Vista and 98 SE.
Maximum single file size is 4GB.
Once you’ve connected your LaCinema Premier and
it is recognized by your operating system (i.e. Windows
2000, XP, Vista or Mac OS X), you may need to refor-
mat its hard drive, particularly if you will be transferring
files larger than 4GB to the LaCinema Premier. The
following information will help you determine the best
format for your system configuration.
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 two different file system format categories:
NTFS and FAT 32 (MS-DOS). See the table, below,
for more information.
7. Reformatting the LaCinema Premier
