I would like to create a backup external firewire drive to back up a MacBook Pro and a PC laptop separately in 2 volumes.

what should i do in formatting the drive to get each recognised correctly by its individual OS?

you could just use Fat 32 and it would be recognised by both.. but wont accept files bigger than 4 gig.

Yet again I can't recommend MacDrive highly enough. One disc, Mac formatted, readable and writeable by both Mac and PC. Small cost, never have an issue again. No I don't work for them.

... or if you don't mind having two partitions on the one drive (which is what the OP requested, I think) then you can follow this OSX Hints tip.


B.

Got a question. I am getting OS X Leopard this Friday (whoo hoo) and would really like to use Time Machine. At the moment I have an external hard drive (it's one of them generic PC brands which allows you to put any ATA drive into it) and it has both USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces.
I can successfully connect the drive to both Windows and the Mac but not simultaneously (access to the PC is through the USB and when I connect the FireWire port into the Mac, it disables the PC from accessing it and is detected in the Mac).

Now is it possible to partition the hard drive into two parts both featuring different system formats HFS and NTFS and turn the HFS partition to Leopard? Better still since Windows can't read the HFS partition would both operating systems be able to access their partitions simultaneously?

Am I asking too much?

As far as i know, no. A drive can only be HFS or NTFS, not both, even if they are on different partitions.

You can have 2 partitions of different types, and if you want to access it on both you need the FAT partition or a NTFS driver for osx

I use Transmac. Personally I like it better.

I bought a WD 500GB hdd and put it in a case myself. I'm going to buy my Macbook next week. So i was wondering how to format the drive so that both the Desktop PC and the Macbook can share it without problems. At the moment its formatted wholly into NTFS. And i suppose ill be using time machine with the macbook so is there any other requirements for that? like partitions.

THANKS really appreciate it

simon

I'd recommend you format it to the native filesystem of HFS+ when you get the macbook, then purchase MacDrive for Windows (so it can read/write it). Otherwise you could just hook it upto the macbook and share it out via the network and the Windows PC could read/write to the drive this way over the network.

Or you could use the Fat/Fat32 Formatting

wats the difference between FAT and HFS+? and yea this is the first time ive formatted a drive. when i did it on the PC, it only gave me the option of NTFS, ive formatted drives when i re-installed windows before when i booted from the CD into FAT. but now in my computer its not giving me the option to format into FAT32. Do i need a program to format the drive or am i jus not looking in the right place?

Create a HFS+partition to equal your MacBook drive for Time Machine, then keep the rest Fat 32 if you want it to work with both Mac/PCS. Note that there is a 4GB file size limit on the FAT32 file system so buying Mac Drive could be a good option.

ok. thanks. but yea this is prob a bad place to ask, but how to format drives into FAT32 and make partitions in windows?

I'm buying a Lacie NAS box for my shared storage requirements. Fingers crossed that by the time I get a new Mac, that Time Machine will support backup to NAS.