To determine what format the drive is in launch Apple’s Disk Utility. You will need to initialize the drive before use. If the drive is formatted NTFS, it will mount on the latest Mac OS, but it will be read-only.If you plan on only using it on a Mac you will want initialize it. You will want to keep the drive in the Fat32 format ONLY if you are moving it between a Mac and a PC. If the drive is formatted FAT32 it will mount on most Macintosh systems.If the drive is formatted Mac Extended, you will not need to initialize the drive before use unless you wish to partition it.
If the LaCie Setup Assistant is not provided on the drive, depending on the model, your hard drive is formatted Mac Extended (HFS+), Windows FAT32 or Windows NTFS. The LaCie Setup Assistant will automatically prepare your LaCie hard drive for use on your system. Some LaCie drives now ship with the LaCie Setup Assistant installed.
