should a new firewire extrnal hd be formatted?

[tab75-13]

Hi all, I have just received a LaCie external hard drive. Do I need to erase it? It's a firewire 250GB. I have read both that it should and that it needn't be erased/ formatted with Mac journal OS extended specs.

Thanks in advance.

[pixeljammedia]

It depends on your usage of the hard drive. If it is formatted for Windows (FAT32), it may not support files larger than 4 GB. Or you may have it formatted as NTFS which a Mac can read but has trouble writing to. The simplest move is to reformat to HFS+ (Journaled) and keep it with your Mac. If you are switching back and forth from Mac to PC then consider using FAT32 and just remembering the 4GB size limitation (which you can bump into quite easily with video editing)

[tab75-13]

Well, I plan to use the drive only with my mac. So should I format to (Journaled)? I mean isn't the drive already formatted? So why should I format it to anything if the disk is already blank and ready to use for the mac? Does that make sense? Why the need to format at all if I'm mainly staying with the Mac?

Thanks for the help.

[pixeljammedia]

All drives are formatted with a specific directory system. If you attach your drive to your Mac and fire up Disk Utility you can find out what format the factory used on your drive. If it is FAT then you will have the file size limitation, if it is NTFS you may have write problems, if it is HFS+ then you should be fine. Formatting to HFS+ (Journaled) on an empty drive just allows you to know you will be able to use it well with your Mac.

[havema-1]

iMovie doesn't properly save to PC/UNIX-formatted volumes, so if you plan to use it, format as Mac OS Extended a.k.a. HFS+.

I think it doesn't matter much whether you Journal the disk or not. Journaling produces a very little speed penalty but it might make the filesystem slightly more robust.

[tab75-13]

The drive was formatted to MS Dos, so I formatted it to (journaled). Its permissions are still not enabeled. Do I have to do something there as well? What does this mean?

Thanks...

[terryj]

Go to the Finder.
Select the mounted drive.
Do a cmd-i and Get info on the drive.
Check for a little checkbox that says
"ignore permissions on this drive"
check it if it is unchecked.

Volia, permissions are ignored,
drive should be accessible to all apps.

[tab75-13]

SO I should check the box which says "Ignore ownership on this volume"?
Is that right?

sorry for the confusion...

thank you

[sjk]

You'll need to uncheck the "Ignore ownership on the volume" checkbox to enable normal OS X permissions on a volume.

[tab75-13]

Gotya Thanks very much

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