User`s guide

DigiDrive Guide28
◆ Each partition is assigned a drive letter and
cannot be further subdivided (Figure 23).
Choosing a File System
Both Windows NT and Windows 2000 support
the NTFS file system. Because NTFS offers secu-
rity, improved file recovery, and integrated
compression, you may want to use NTFS for par-
titions that will store system or applications
data. However, it is strongly recommended that
you use FAT 32 or FAT 16 to format DigiDrive
partitions intended to store digital sound data.
If you are using Windows 2000, you should use
the FAT 32 file system. Windows NT does not
support the FAT 32 file system and refers to FAT
16 as “FAT” in the user interface.
Partition Size
Windows applications do not require specific
partition sizes or file systems, so a wide range of
partitioning schemes are possible. In general,
smaller partitions offer somewhat better perfor-
mance, but the smaller the partition, the smaller
the maximum file size. While the largest FAT 32
partition allowed under Windows 2000 is much
larger than the DigiDrive, Windows NT and FAT
16 partitions are limited to only 4096 MB.
Digidesign recommends that you partition
DigiDrives into 4095 MB partitions. After parti-
tioning a DigiDrive this way, a block of free
space may remain. You can choose to format
this space or leave it unformatted. One advan-
tage to leaving small blocks unformatted is that
it will prevent inadvertent Disk Allocation to a
partition that is too small to be practical for au-
dio recording.
Creating Primary Partitions
To create a primary partition for Windows NT:
1 Start Windows NT 4.0 and log in to an ac-
count with administrative privileges. If you do
not have administrative privileges, see your sys-
tem administrator to get privileges.
2 Click the Start button, point to Programs, and
select Administrative Tools.
3 From the Administrative Tools menu, click
Disk Administrator. The first Disk Administrator
window opens.
4 From the Windows NT Disk Administrator, se-
lect the disk on which you are going to create
one or more primary partitions.
5 From the Partition menu, choose Create. The
Create Primary Partition dialog box appears
(Figure 24).
6 Choose the size of the primary partition by
typing a number up to 4095MB or by clicking
the up or down arrow.
Figure 23. Four partitions per physical drive (the
maximum)
G
H
IJ
Four partitions (Drives G–J)
Figure 24. Create Primary Partition