Optional Formatting and Partitioning

LaCie Little Disk • Design by Sam Hecht	Formatting & Partitioning
User Manual	page 14

3. Optional Formatting and Partitioning

The first time you use your LaCie Little Disk, LaCie Setup As- sistant formats your drive according to your needs. If your needs change, you can reformat your LaCie Little Disk to op- timize it for use with Windows or Mac, or for cross-platform use. For example, if you used LaCie Setup Assistant to format your drive to work with your Mac (HFS+), but now you want to share your hard disk with Windows users, you can reformat it to FAT 32 (MS-DOS) for this purpose.

You may need to format your LaCie Little Disk if LaCie Setup As- sistant was interrupted or stopped. If the hard disk does not appear in My Computer (Windows) or on the desktop (Mac), it may not be formatted properly.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION: The LaCie hard drive is preformat- ted in FAT-32 (MS-DOS) format, optimized for use with Mac and Windows OS. See File System Formats, below for explanations of the other possible file formats.

IMPORTANT INFO: Reformatting will erase everything from the hard drive. If you have information that you want to protect or con- tinue to use, back up this information before reformatting.

What is Formatting?

When a disk is formatted, the following things occur: 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. Your LaCie Hard Drive is preformatted in FAT-32 (MSDOS) format. To reformat your drive, follow the instruc- tions in this section.

What is Partitioning?

You can also divide the hard disk into sections, called partitions. A partition is a section of the hard disk’s storage capacity that is cre- ated 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 of- fice, 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 categories: NTFS, FAT 32 (MS-DOS), and Mac OS Extended (HFS+). Use the information below to determine which format is best for you.

Use NTFS if…

...you will be using the drive only with Windows XP, Win- dows Vista, or Windows 7 (performance will generally be greater when compared to FAT 32). This file system is com- patible in read only mode with Mac OS X 10.3 and higher.

Use HFS+ if…

...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 (MS-DOS) if…

...you will be using your drive with both Windows and Mac OS. Maximum single file size is 4GB.