Lacie Rugged Safe User Manual - Page 33

LaCie rugged SAFE • Design by Neil Poulton User Manual Formatting Your Hard Drive page 33 6. Formatting Your LaCie Rugged Safe The first user registration asks if you would like to format your LaCie Rugged Safe in FAT32. FAT32 is a file system best used when sharing a drive between Mac and Windows operating systems. You may elect not to format the drive in FAT32 if you prefer to use your Rugged Safe with a file system optimized for a specific operating system. Please note that you may change the file system at any time, though the formatting process will erase all data on the disk drive. What is Formatting? Formatting a disk entails the following: 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. LaCie Safe Manager offers to format your drive when first used, but you can elect not to, or reformat by 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 storage capacity that is created to contain files and data. LaCie does not support using the Rugged Safe with more than one data partition. 6.1. One Partition for the Rugged Safe Please note that LaCie does not support using the Rugged Safe with more than one partition. Dividing the Rugged Safe into more than one partition may create problems when operating the device and a loss of data. LaCie Safe Manager formats the device into one FAT32 partition but you may choose to format in HFS or NTFS. No matter the format, please do not divide the disk into more than one partition since LaCie cannot guarantee optimal performance and you risk losing data. File System Formats There 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, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 since performance will generally be greater compared to FAT32. This file system is compatible in read only mode with Mac OS 10.3 and higher. Use HFS+ if: ...you will be using the drive only with the Mac OS since performance 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 Mac OS 9.x or 10.x. TECHNICAL NOTE: FAT32 (MS-DOS) is recommended for sharing a hard drive with Mac and Windows. However, the FAT32 file system generally runs slower than HFS+ (Mac) or NTFS (Windows). FAT32 also has a single file size limit of 4GB. IMPORTANT INFO: Reformatting will erase everything from the hard drive. Back up any data that you want to preserve before reformatting.