LaCie SAFE User Manual

Also see for SAFE Mobile Hard Drive: User manual User manual Quick install guide Manual Manual 

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LaCie SAFE User Manual Manual pdf 33 page image

LaCie rugged SAFE • Design by neil Poulton Formatting Your Hard DriveUser Manual page 336. Formatting Your LaCie Rugged SafeThe first user registration asks if you would like to format your LaCieRugged Safe in FAT32. FAT32 is a file system best used when shar-ing a drive between Mac and Windows operating systems. You mayelect not to format the drive in FAT32 if you prefer to use your Rug-ged Safe with a file system optimized for a specific operating system.Please note that you may change the file system at any time, thoughthe formatting process will erase all data on the disk drive.What is Formatting?Formatting a disk entails the following: the operating system erasesall of the bookkeeping information on the disk; tests the disk tomake sure that all of the sectors are reliable; marks bad sectors (i.e.,those that are scratched); and creates internal address tables that itlater uses to locate information. LaCie Safe Manager offers to for-mat your drive when first used, but you can elect not to, or reformatby following the instructions in this section.Formatting includes the option to divide a hard drive into sections,called partitions. A partition is a fraction of the hard drive’s storagecapacity that is created to contain files and data. LaCie does notsupport using the Rugged Safe with more than one data partition.6.1. One Partition for the RuggedSafePlease note that LaCie does not support using the Rugged Safe withmore than one partition. Dividing the Rugged Safe into more thanone partition may create problems when operating the device anda loss of data.LaCie Safe Manager formats the device into one FAT32 partition butyou may choose to format in HFS or NTFS. No matter the format,please do not divide the disk into more than one partition sinceLaCie cannot guarantee optimal performance and you risk losingdata.File System FormatsThere are three different file system format categories:FAT32 (MS-DOS), NTFS, and Mac OS Extended (HFS+).See the table below for more information.Use NTFS if:...you will be using the drive only with Windows XP, WindowsVista, or Windows 7 since performance will generally begreater compared to FAT32. This file system is compatible inread only mode with Mac OS 10.3 and higher.Use HFS+ if:...you will be using the drive only with the Mac OS sinceperformance will generally be greater compared to FAT32.This file system is not compatible with Windows.Use FAT32 if:...you will be using your drive with both Windows and MacOS 9.x or 10.x.TECHNICAL NOTE: FAT32 (MS-DOS) is recommended for sharinga hard drive with Mac and Windows. However, the FAT32 file systemgenerally runs slower than HFS+ (Mac) or NTFS (Windows). FAT32also has a single file size limit of 4GB.IMPORTANT INFO: Reformatting will erase everything from thehard drive. Back up any data that you want to preserve before re-formatting.