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Set Up
Hooking up the hard drive is a no-brainer. Just plug in the power supply, connect the firewire
cable from the hard drive to the firewire port on your Mac, and then flip the switch on. You can
alternately use the USB connection instead, but I prefer firewire, and this will review will be on
the firewire functionality.
Once the drive is connected and powered on, the drive will show up on your desktop - no
software or drivers required. The SimpleDrive is DOS formatted at the factory, so although it can
be used right out of the box, the instructions recommend (as do I) that you reformat the drive
before using it. Just run Disk Utility, and reformat the drive as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)
for the most compatibility with OS X. Under this formatting scheme, the drive capacity is 232.76
GB. If you need the drive to work with PC's as well as Mac's, then you will want to leave the
drive as DOS formatted.
Formatting the SimpleDrive for Mac OS X
Design
The SimpleDrive sports a sleek and slender design (see picture at top of review). It's very light
weight, and includes two black boots to sit the drive in. The drive runs very quiet. There is no
noisy fan, and yet it does a decent job of containing the drive heat (it's warm to the touch). The
case is mostly silver, with a long V-shaped translucent cap on the front. Within this area are the
drive LEDs, a red light for indicating that power is on, and a very subtle green light for drive I/O
activity. In the back is the power port for the drive's power adapter, one USB port, one Firewire
port, and an on/off switch.
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Mac Guild Review
10/17/2005
http://mac
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guild.org/reviews/review326.html