External Hard Drive Question?

[merc669]

I am looking to buy an external HD for use in backing up my Computers. So thew first thing is that it has FW and USB. I have a MBP and a Dell XP Computer. Do I need to Partition the drive for both OS's prior to using the drive. And if so, do I do the partitioning from one or both machines? Thanks!!

Bill......

[PlaceofDis]

get a Dual drive with FW and USB, best of both worlds in my opinion.

you can partition it with either XP or OS X, but you'll have to format it for their respective formating if you so desire. if you want the info to be able to be written/read from either OS, FAT32 is your best bet.

however, for a bootable cloned backup of OS X, you'd want your own partition for that and it'll have to be formated appropriately.

what kind of backup method are you trying to employ?

[merc669]

what kind of backup method are you trying to employ?

Right now I am trying out "Superduper". I recently had to backup my HD to my Dell across the network and with the exception of a few hickups recover all my data. I definitly want a Dual USB/FW Drive and like you said I will probably want to use the FW to boot from the MBP. Will OSX Partition and format just one partition for the OSX and then I can let XP take care of the other or what would be better. Thanks!!

Bill.....