LaCie Mobile Drive
Hi-Speed USB 2.0
page
Once you’ve connected your drive and it is recog-
nized by your operating system (i.e. Windows 98 SE,
Me, 2000, XP or Mac OS 9.x or 10.x), you are ready to
format and partition the drive. In order to store infor-
mation 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
.
In order to utilize a hard disk drive, it has to be for-
matted first. Formatting a disk consists of the following:
the operating system erases all of the bookkeeping in-
formation 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.
Once formatted, the actual available storage capacity
varies, depending on operating environment, and is gen-
erally about 10% less than the non-formatted capacity.
After you’ve formatted the drive, you will the op-
portunity to divide the hard drive into sections, called
Partitioning
. 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 word documents, one for
your spreadsheets and one for your multimedia files.
3. Using Your LaCie Drive
TeChNICAl NOTe:
Your Mobile Hard
Drive comes formatted as a FAT 32 volume.
FAT 32
is recommended for sharing a hard
drive with Windows 98 SE and Mac OS users.
However keep in mind that the FAT 32 for-
mat will slow down your hard drive and single
file size is limited to 4 GB.
Use NTFS if...
Use HFS+ if...
...you will be using the drive only under Windows 2000 or Win-
dows 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.
...you will be using the drive on Macs only; performance will
generally be greater when compared to FAT 32. This file system
is NOT compatible with Windows OS.
Use FAT 32 if...
For more information, please refer to page 12,
Formatting and
Partitioning Your LaCie Hard Drive
.
...you will be using your drive between both Windows and Mac
OS 9.x or 10.x; or sharing the drive between Windows 2000, XP,
and 98 SE. Maximum single file size: 4GB.
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