intialize external HD for mac and pc

hi,
I need to use an external HD on both a mac and a pc. I know the only way is to format it with a FAT32 file system, wich I did.
problem is:

1) I tried to format it from winXP (using the ms-dos command line "format x:\ fs:fat32", more or less) and it worked. the pc recognizes it and is able to read and write. BUT, the mac is only able to read from it, not to write or to erase anything.

2) next step, I initialized it with mac's disk utility, selecting MS-DOS (FAT) as file system. It works great on the mac, BUT I'm not even able to see it on the pc. More specifically, it appears the sistray icon to expel it, it is recognized by device manager and by partition manager (or something similar, a program in admistrative tools) but it is not among the drives in my computer.

what is it wrong? what should i do?

many thanks for your help

angelwatt said:

He wants to share the files on the hard drive, not have a part on the drive for each OS.

OP:
When you formatted the drive on Windows to FAT did you verify afterward that it was actually FAT? The not being able to write to the disk sounds like it may have become NTFS.

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you're right, i just checked and it's formatted as NTFS! don't know why.

angelwatt said:

Not sure why formatting from Mac didn't work though. I've never had issues when I format my drives and use them with Windows.

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btw, this is the real issue. why doesn't windows recognize it?? as far as I know, the only limit of a FAT file system is that it can't handle files bigger than 4 GB. i don't have any.
it's a lacie 1TB external HD, is this useful?

Cave Man said:

Just initialize the drive as NTFS on your Win box, then install both freewares Macfuse and NTFS-3g on your Mac. Both computers can then read and write to the drive.

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I did as you said, and it works!

thanks!