Lacie HD maintenance

[JPaul]

I've been using my Lacie 500 gb Firewire/USB HD to backup my video for the Kron+. So far, it's worked very well. Now I'm wondering if I should use my PC to defrag and or reformat the Lacie to keep it from slowing down or possibly crashing. If I derag, I will not lose my files. If I reformat, I will have to dump the meaningful files somewhere temporarily. Also, I believe the Lacie must be in FAT32 but I'm having trouble verifying this. Any thoughts?

[MichaelD]

I'm not sure if you can De Frag an external drive as 'normally' the PC has to keep track of what files are what and where on the internal drive(s) and with an external one it can't - maybe someone else can help with that.

However the format, if you wipe it clean, would be FAT32.

[JPaul]

Actually, you can defrag any external drive including cards, but my PC reported that it wasn't necessary. I also opted not to reformat. You have to balance "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" with "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

[zeketorres]

Do you happen to know what the model number is of your Lacie 500 gigabyte firewire drive is? I dropped mine last night and there is no model number anywhere on the exterior. I probably will have to open it. I use if for backup to my Prestige editors.
Thanks.
Zeke Torres

[CKNewman]

If you purchased the model that was recommended for Casablanca editors I believe it would be a Lacie D2 Quadra. I have one but can't use it until I get another power supply.

[zeketorres]

Thank you Craig.

[BobFoster]

Defraging is a Windows PC maintenance issue mostly on older PC's. Mac OSX and Casablanca Linux systems would only need defraging on rare and very exceptional situations. (Read: no defraging required.) You can Google for details.

[RonaldPawlak]

While we are on the subject of Lacie hard drives, I just bought one from Best Buy. I know, I know, I should have bought one from Gary McNally it would have been all set up, I wouldn't have to ask these questions.
When I want to use it for Bogart for Windows, do I have to format the drive? I read somewhere it has to be format, FAT 32, really?
I am new to B4W, also just bought a HP laptop with Windows 8.1, and I have a lot of questions. Was wondering, how many people are using B4W? Are they very successful using it, do they like it better that then using a stand alone unit? There aren't a lot of people asking questions on the B4W site, so they must be pretty profficient (I guess that's how you spell it) using it.