24
PC Operation
About the File System of Hard Disk
The Mobile Video HDD is pre-formatted as a NTFS or FAT32 disk, you can directly access this
drive after connected to PC. If you want to re-partition the disk, please note:
Although your operating system may support several different file systems, FAT32 or NTFS
partitions are strongly recommended. When using the Mobile Video HDD as a media
player, it can only read NTFS and FAT32 partition.
Although you can create multiple partitions on the hard disk, when using the Mobile
Video HDD as a media player, it can only browse and play the media files
located in the first “Primary” partition.
See “How to Partition the Hard Disk” to create or change the partition. The following
information should help you decide which file system is the best for you.

NTFS File System

The NTFS file system can support very large files (no 4GB size limitation for single file). The
NTFS file system is compatible with the most newer versions of the Windows OS. If your PC
or laptop computer uses either Windows XP or Windows 2000, partition and format the
Mobile Video HDD as an NTFS file system is recommended.

FAT32 File System

The FAT32 file system is required if your computer uses Windows 98SE, Windows ME or the
Mac OS X operating system. These operating systems do not support the NTFS file system
(Windows XP and Windows 2000 support both FAT32 and NTFS drives). The FAT32 file
system has some size limitations, but it is also supported by many different operating
systems. Even if your computer does support NTFS partitions, a FAT32 partition might still
be a better choice if you expect to be moving files between many different computers.
Hard disk drives formatted as FAT32 volumes have the following limitations:
• This drive cannot store any file that is larger than 4GB.
• The Windows XP and Windows 2000 “New Partition Wizard” cannot create FAT32
partition larger than 32GB. This limitation is due to the Windows XP/2000 operating
system, not the FAT32 file system. FDISK and other disk-partitioning utilities can create
FAT32 partitions much larger than 32GB. Despite these limits when partitioning new
FAT32 drives, Windows XP/2000 can still read and write to drives that already have
FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB.