About Formatting & File Systems; About Formatting - Acomdata External HARD DRIVE USB 2.0 User Manual

About Formatting & File Systems
formatting a hard disk erases all data stored on the disk! Before you re-
format or partition your Drive, be sure to save a copy of any files you wish
to keep to another storage device.
You can only re-format the HD partition. The cD partition cannot be
altered or deleted.
About Formatting
Before a hard disk can be used to store data it must contain
one or more partitions, and each partition must be format-
ted with a given file system. ("Formatting" is also commonly
referred to as "Initializing" on the Mac OS.)
A file system defines the disk's directory structure for keep-
ing track of and accessing files. It also governs other fea-
tures, such as the way files are named, the maximum allow-
able size of a file or volume, and the disk's allocation unit size
(the smallest unit of data storage on a disk).
The HD partition of your AcomData Drive was formatted at
the factory with the FAT32 file system. This makes the Drive
compatible with both Mac and PC, and ready to use right
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