Using your Pocket Hard Drive with a Macintosh system

How to plug in the drive

To plug in the drive to a computer running Mac OS 9.2.2 or later, uncoil the USB cable from the Pocket Hard Drive and then plug the connector into one of your computer's USB ports.

How to format the drive

Your new Seagate Pocket drive is factory-formatted with a FAT32 file format. Although your Macintosh operating system may recognize and mount your new drive with this format, FAT32 is not recommended for use with a Macintosh OS. You must format your drive using one of the Mac OS format types before you use it with your Macintosh operating system. Reformatting takes only a few seconds using Apple's Disk Utility, which comes with your Mac OS.

Caution. Formatting destroys all data on the drive. If you have data on the Pocket Hard Drive that you want to keep, back up the data before formatting the drive. Seagate is not responsible for lost data.


To format the drive:

  1. Open Disk Utility, which is located in Applications/Utilities. In Mac OS 9, this utility is named Drive Setup.

  2. Select the disc that you want to reformat in the left column. Be sure to select the new Pocket Hard Drive, and not an existing drive that may contain data, because reformatting and/or partitioning erases all data on the selected drive.

  3. Click Initialize to reformat the drive. Within seconds, the reformat will be complete. When it is done, your drive appears on your desktop and is ready to use to store your favorite files.

When the USB cable is connected properly (and your computer is on) a light briefly appears in the center of the Pocket Hard Drive. This indicates that the Pocket Hard Drive is receiving power and is ready to use.

If your Pocket Hard Drive does not show up on your desktop, please refer to the Questions and Answers section for steps you can take to resolve the problem.

After the system detects the drive, the light in the center of the drive becomes a drive activity indicator. This means the light will flicker on and off when your computer is accessing the drive. The light is normally off when the Pocket Hard Drive is not accessing data.

How to disconnect the drive

Before you disconnect the drive, check the LED (light) in the center of the Pocket Hard Drive. If it is on or blinking, your computer is communicating with the drive and should not be disconnected. Wait until the LED is off and then click on the drive icon and drag it to the trash. Note. In Mac OS X, the trash icon turns into an eject symbol when you begin dragging the drive icon across your desktop. Once the drive icon is no longer displayed on your desktop, it is safe to unplug the drive from your computer.

Caution. Do not unplug the drive when the light is on or blinking. Doing so may result in data corruption or lost data. Seagate is not responsible for lost data.

Sharing data between Windows and Macintosh systems

Seagate does not recommend that you use your Pocket Hard Drive to share data between Windows and Macintosh operating systems. This is primarily due to all of the variables in OS types and versions, formats, interfaces, and third-party connectivity software packages. If you absolutely must use your Pocket Hard Drive to share data between Windows and Macintosh systems, initialize your drive (before you use it!) for a Macintosh OS, as described above, and then purchase and install-on your Windows system-available third-party software that allows your Windows system to read from and write to a drive that is formatted for a Mac OS.

  Do not leave your drive in its pre-formatted FAT32 condition if you intend to transfer data between Mac and Windows systems. Doing so may result in data loss.