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Using Your LaCie Drive
3. Using Your LaCie Drive
Formatting
a disk consists of the following: 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.
As you format the drive, you will have the opportunity to 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.
Once formatted, the actual available storage capacity varies, depending on
operating environment, and is generally about 10% less than the non-for-
matted capacity.
File System Formats
There are three different file system formats that are predominately found in
Mac and Windows environments:
•Mac OS Extended (HFS+) - for Mac OS 9.x and Mac OS 10.x
•NTFS - for Windows 2000 and XP
•FAT 32 - for Windows Me and legacy operating systems
teCH note:
Windows Users!
This LaCie Hard Drive is for-
matted for the Mac operating
system, and you will need to re-
format the drive in order for it to
appear and operate under the
Windows operating system.
Important note:
If you
will be using this drive between
Mac and Windows operating
environments, you can create
two partitions: one 32gB FAT 32
volume, and one large Mac OS
Extended volume. There are cer-
tain limitations to this configura-
tion, though; to achieve the best
performance and reliability, it is
recommended that you utilize a
third-party utility, such as Medi-
afour’s MacDrive, which allows
Windows computers to read and
write files on a volume formatted
for the Mac.
Mac Users
• If you will be using the drive in a strictly Mac
OS environment, leave the drive formatted as one
large Mac OS Extended volume.
• If you want to be able to install multiple Mac
operating systems on the LaCie Drive, partition the
drive into multiple Mac OS Extended volumes.
Windows Users
• If you will be using this drive between Windows 98SE, Me, 2000
and/or XP environments, it is recommended that you create two
partitions: one that is a 32GB FAT 32 (MS-DOS File System) volume,
and the other as a large NTFS volume.
• If you will be using the drive in a strictly Win 2000/XP environ-
ment, create one large NTFS volume.
