LaCie Desktop Hard Drive
User Manual
Page
Formatting and Partitioning
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 ad-
dress tables that it later uses to locate information. Your
LaCie Hard Drive is preformatted in FAT-32 (MS-
DOS) format. To reformat your drive, follow the in-
structions in this section.
What is Partitioning?
You can also 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. 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.
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, right, for more information.
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Once you’ve connected your drive and it is recog-
nized by your operating system (Windows 2000/XP/
Vista or Mac OS 10.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 contain the data that 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, Windows XP or Windows Vista (perfor-
mance 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 10.x or sharing the drive between Win-
dows 2000 and Windows XP or Windows Vista.
Maximum single file size is 4GB.
TeChNICAl NOTe:
The LaCie Hard Drive
is preformatted in HFS+, optimized for use with
Mac OS. Windows users will need to reformat the
drive. See File System Formats, below for explana-
tions of the other possible file formats.
