Re-Formatting The Drive - Acomdata E5 External Hard Drives User Manual

Re-Formatting the Drive

FORMATTING A HARD DRIVE ERASES ALL DATA
STORED ON THE DRIVE! BEFORE YOU FORMAT THE
DRIVE, BE SURE TO SAVE A COPY OF ANY FILES YOU
WISH TO KEEP TO ANOTHER STORAGE DEVICE.
Your AcomData E5 Drive was formatted at the factory with
the FAT32 file system. This makes the Drive both PC and Mac
compatible right out of the box, and allows you to share
files between platforms.
If you plan to use your Drive only on a Mac or only on a PC,
you should consider re-formatting the Drive with one of the
more advanced file systems that may be available to you.
Formatting Options for PC Users
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If you are running Windows 2000 or XP and you do not plan
to use the Drive on a Mac or Windows 95 or Me, consider
re-formatting your Drive with the NTFS file system. NTFS
provides several advantages over FAT32, including better
security and support for files larger than 4 GB. NTFS is not
compatible with Windows 98SE and Me.
Formatting Options for Mac Users
If you plan to use the Drive only on a Mac, consider re-for-
matting your Drive with the Mac OS Extended file system.
Formatting Options
for Cross-Platform Compatibility
If you ever need to re-format your Drive and you need both
PC and Mac compatibility, you have two options:
1. Format the Drive on a PC with the FAT32 file system.
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2. Format the Drive on Mac OS X v.10.3 with the MS-DOS
file system. The MS-DOS files system is the equivalent of
FAT32 on the PC.
Mac OS 10.2 Users:
Hard drives or drive partitions that are larger than 128 GB
and formatted with the FAT32/MS DOS file system will not
mount on Mac OS 10.2 through 10.2.8. If your Drive is larger
than 128 GB, and you are using Mac OS 10.2, you have several
options to deal with this issue:
1) Re-format the Drive using the Mac OS Extended file system;
2) Partition the Drive so that no single partition is larger
than 128 GB;
3) Upgrade to Mac OS 10.3. For more information, go to
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107483
on the Apple web site.
Mac OS X v.10.3 Users:
If you connect an NTFS-formatted disk to a Mac running Mac
OS X v.10.3, the computer will be able to read the Mac-com-
patible files, but you will not be able to save any data to the
disk.
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