How To Safely Turn Off (And Disconnect) Mini Pal - Acomdata HD500FPMM User Manual

Formatting mini Pal
in Mac OS 9
Before you can re-format the mini Pal you will need to restart your computer
from the Mac OS 9 System Software CD that come with your computer or
which you purchased as an upgrade.
1. Disable any anti-virus software you may have running in the background.
2. Insert the System Software CD into your CD drive.
3. With your AcomData mini Pal connected and powered on, restart the com-
puter and hold down the C key while the computer is starting up.
4. You will see the alert message: "This disk is unreadable by this computer.
Do you want to initialize this disk?" Click OK.
5. In the Name field, type in a name for your mini Pal. You should give the
mini Pal a unique name that will allow you to easily distinguish it from
other hard drives or storage devices connected to your computer.
6. From the Format menu, select Mac OS Extended.
7. Click Initialize. You should then get the alert message: "Initializing will erase
all information on this disk. " Click Continue. Once initializing is complete,
you should see the mini Pal mounted on your Desktop with the name you
assigned.
8. Go to Control Panels--> Startup Disk and select the computer's startup
disk. Restart the computer.
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How to Safely Turn Off
(and Disconnect) mini Pal
NEVER TURN OFF A HARD DRIVE WITHOUT UNMOUNTING IT FIRST. YOU
MAY LOSE DATA OR DAMAGE THE DRIVE.
The Importance of Mounting and Unmounting
A hard drive requires two types of connections to "talk" to a computer: a
physical connection, which is made using the interface cable (USB, FireWire),
and which serves as the line of communication; and a logical connec-
tion, which allows the two devices to detect and recognize each other.
Establishing the logical connection is called "mounting. "
Mounting occurs automatically when you turn on a hard drive that is con-
nected to a computer (assuming the computer has the necessary drivers).
Think of mounting as the computer and hard drive saying "hello. " You know
that a hard drive is mounted when you see the drive icon on the Desktop
(Mac) or the drive icon/letter in My Computer (Windows).
If you want to turn off a hard drive, you first need to unmount it. Think of
unmounting as the computer and the drive saying "goodbye. " If you turn off a
drive or disconnect the interface cable without unmounting it first, the logi-
cal connection will have not been properly terminated. As a result, you could
lose data or even damage the drive.
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