1 External 500GB Drive - 2 Partitions (MAC/PC)

[mannymendez]

I want to share one external drive with both my PC and Mac. I do not want to share the data. I want to use the PC partition to backup my Vista OS and want to use the Mac partition to backup my Mac OS. what is the best way to configure this?

I had created an NTFS partition using my Vista machine, but when I plugged in the external drive into my Mac and tried to create a Mac OS Extended partition, I lost my NTFS partion. I dont know what I am doing. Help Please!!!!

 

[smokestack]

when i have split an external drive between file formats, i have found it best to do the initial split on my mac.

use disk utility to set up a half MacOS, half NTFS drive.
after that, take it to the vista computer and let it have it's way with the half drive allocated to it.

(this can still sometimes be a pain, i have had formats 'not take'.)
good luck

 

[The Mook]

format the whole dirve in ntfs then install this on your mac NTFS now both the mac and windows can use the drive.

 

[kastenbrust]

format the whole dirve in ntfs then install this on your mac NTFS now both the mac and windows can use the drive.

You do realize there is a free version on that software called MACFuse and NTFS-3G

 

[mannymendez]

do i have to use additional software for what I am looking for? this is what I did and seams to work.

Using mac os, I created two partitons, one formatted as Mac OS Extended and the other as Fat32.

I then connected the drive to my vista machine and and converted from Fat32 to NTFS.

now my vista machine will use the NTFS partition to save data and the mac machine will save data to the Mac OS Extended partition.

do i really need the applications stated on this thread?

 

[JustGretchen]

no, if everything is working, you're good.

You did exactly what I was going to tell you to do...OS X 10.5 seems to be able to split the drive now into 2 partitions and format one as HFS+ and the other as FAT32...

Mac OS X didn't used to be able to do this. I'm not sure when the functionality was added, but I just realized it'd do it the other day when i was formatting a flash drive.

There used to be a very complex manual way to get it done through terminal which was outlined on macosxhints.com but now it appears disk utility "just works"