Help with multiformat external HDD! Please!!

[hookem12387]

Alright, here is my situation:
I have a seagate freeAgent pro external USB HDD. It's hooked up to my mac mini. What I'd like to do is partition it and use half for my time machine back up and half for my pc back up (I imagine I can figure out how to partition and format 1 partition for mac, but any help is always appreciated). I'd like to keep it always hooked up to the mini. My hope is that I can back up over the network to it from the pc. Is this possible? I guess it would be using the mini as a server of sorts...I guess.
Anyway, I have no idea how to do much of any of this. Thank you so much for any help!

 

[hookem12387]

Do I have any hope of someone even half knowing if I can do this?

 

[Draddy]

of course... you can partition it however many times you want... I have one of my 500GB drives split 200/300 ... 200 for time machine and the rest as a media server..

and time machine has no problem backing up to network drives... but I don't know about coming from a PC.