How To Safely Dismount & Disconnect The Drive; Maintaining Your Drive & Safeguarding Your Data - Acomdata Ondago User Manual

How to Safely Dismount
& Disconnect the Drive
NEVER DISCONNECT THE DRIVE WITHOUT DISMOUNTING
IT FIRST. YOU MAY LOSE DATA OR DAMAGE THE DRIVE.
When a device, such as a hard drive, is "mounted" to a com-
puter, that means the computer has detected the device
and established a communications link with it. When you
dismount a device, the communications link is severed and
the computer can no longer access it.
PC Users
1. In the system tray at the bottom of your screen, click the
safely remove/icon (the icon with the green arrow)...
On Windows 98SE and Me a rectangle will appear with
the name of the Drive followed by the drive letter.
On Windows 2000 and XP you will see the alert message
"Safely Remove..." or "Stop..." followed by the drive letter.
2. Select the AcomData Drive. After a few seconds, Windows
will give you a message that it is safe to remove the device.
3. Click OK. The Drive will dismount. You can then discon-
nect it.
Mac Users
Drag the Drive's icon to the Trash. The Drive will dismount
and you can then safely disconnect it.
Whether you are using a Mac or PC...
When you shut down your computer, the Drive will dis-
mount automatically. After your computer has turned off,
you can safely disconnect it.
– 44 –
Maintaining Your Drive
& Safeguarding Your Data
A hard drive is a very sophisticated and sensitive device that
requires proper care and maintenance to ensure the longest
possible life, reliable operation and––most importantly––
the integrity of your stored data.
Backup Your Data
The single most important action you can take to safeguard
your valuable data is to backup the data to another storage
device. There are many reasons why data stored on a hard
drive can become corrupted or lost. One of the most com-
mon causes of data loss is human error, such as mistakenly
deleting or overwriting a file.
You should backup your data on a regular basis using a
quality data backup utility. How often depends on how fre-
quently you save data to the Drive. If you save data to the
Drive on a daily basis, then you should backup your data
daily.
Defragmenting and Optimizing
a Hard Drive
A hard drive stores data on disks called platters. Each platter
surface is divided into concentric tracks. Each track is divid-
ed into sections called sectors. A group of sectors, called a
cluster, is the smallest unit of data storage space on a platter.
When data is saved to a new drive, it is written contiguously,
one cluster after another. As old files are erased, clusters
that were previously occupied become available for new
data. However, there may not be enough space for the drive
to write a new file in a contiguous set of clusters. The drive
– 45 –