Macbook Pro and External Hard Disk Help

[thakerv]

Hi guys, this is my first post in the forum. I am going to get a Macbook Pro (base config) in June, after WWDC (just incase + i have exams now). This will be my first mac and i am very excited. I have 1 question though, I plan to get a Lacie hard disk (http://www.lacie.com/intl/products/product.htm?pid=11084) and I was wondering if I can use this for time machine and also for transferring data from home and school. For eample I will have all my back-ups and other documents as well. Also if I plug my disk into a windows machine (my school uses windows only) can I go through the TM backup folders to access data from there or will I have to save it again separately? Also I think the drive has a FAT32 format. Does this mean that any other files that I add have to be less than 4GB. Thanks in advance

 

[robbieduncan]

Time Machine will only backup to partitions formatted in HFS+. You can have two partitions on the disk: one HFS+ for Time Machine backups, one FAT32 for data transfer...

 

[thakerv]

Time Machine will only backup to partitions formatted in HFS+. You can have two partitions on the disk: one HFS+ for Time Machine backups, one FAT32 for data transfer...

Thanks a lot! Also can the partition be done in disk utility?

 

[robbieduncan]

Sure, but do it straight away: repartitioning deletes all data on the drive...