Granite Digital FireWire 800 Hot-Swap Series - Manual (Page 10)

Granite Digital • 3101 Whipple Rd. • Union City, Ca. 94587 www.granitedigital.com
Page 10 USERS GUIDE
Drivers and OS Issues - Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, XP
Windows 98SE (second edition) was the first MicroSoft OS version
that included support for FireWire 1394. This first implementation does not
operate as efficiently as the newer versions of the MicroSoft OS family and
speeds will be slower when running this Operating System. This was
Microsoft's first OS with FireWire support but it is not as good as what is
currently available in the newer OS's.
When using these older OS’s (98SE & ME), use the Fdisk and Format
Utilities in order to format and partition a new drive. Complete instructions
are detailed on the Microsoft web site. Initializing a FireWire drive is identi-
cal to initializing any standard IDE mechanism and this must be performed
before the drive will work. Fdisk and Format are accessed from the the DOS
Prompt.
The newer OS’s, 2000 and XP use the Disk Management utility to parti-
tion and format a new drive. Information on this utility is also available on
the Microsoft web site. The interface is graphical and this new drive will
usually appear at the end of the list of drives. The drive will show up as a
“non-allocated” volume. After you partition and format the drive, the drives
icon will appear with the other drives in the “My Computer” window.
*** Note : You will be given choices as to which file system you want to run,
FAT32, NTFS, etc. If you choose NTFS, the drive can only be read by the
Windows 2000 operating systems. If you want to also use the drive with
98SE or ME, choose FAT32 as your file system choice.