File System Formats

LaCie hard disk • DESIGN BY NEIL POULTON	Formatting & Partitioning
User Manual	page 14

3. Optional Formatting & Partitioning

The first time you use your LaCie hard disk, the LaCie Setup As- sistant formats your drive according to your needs. If your needs change, you can reformat your LaCie hard disk to optimize 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, but now you want to share your hard disk with Windows users, you can reformat it to FAT 32 (MS-DOS) for this purpose. To reformat your drive, follow the instructions in this section.

IMPORTANT INFO: Please copy the User Manual and utili- ties to your computer before reformatting. Reformatting will erase everything from the hard disk. If you have other data that you want to protect or continue to use, copy this information to your computer before reformatting.

There are three different file system format categories: NTFS, FAT 32 (MS-DOS), and Mac OS Extended (HFS+). See the table, be- low, for more information.

Use NTFS if...

...you will be using the drive only with Windows 7, Win- dows XP or Windows Vista (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.

What is Formatting?

When a disk is formatted, the following things occur: the operat- ing 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 in- ternal address tables that it later uses to locate information.

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 created to contain files and data. For instance, you could create three partitions on your drive: one partition for your office docu- ments, one as a backup and one for your multimedia files. Or, if you will be sharing the drive with another person in your house- hold or office, you can create a partition for each person who uses the drive. Partitioning is optional.

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 10.3 or sharing the drive between Windows 7 and Windows XP or Windows Vista. Maximum single file size is 4GB.