Multi-OS user environment: using a multi-partition external drive?

[MD5Hash]

I'm thinking of making the jump and making my first Apple computer purchase. Time machine will be a welcome native backup solution, especially since I can do it over the network automatically.

However, I've read that Time Machine naturally requires HFS+ formatted disks. But I will still have my Win7 laptop for gaming purposes, and of course that requires NTFS or FAT32 for writability.

My question: Can I just take a TM compatible external drive, split it into two partitions, and then specify that each computer backup onto its own partition with its own file system?

Has anyone done that before? Just curious and wanted to get some Feedback, so thank you in advance.

 

[Angelo95210]

Hummm... you want to back up a win partition on a win partition with TM ? Seems not doable for me...

 

[MD5Hash]

Hummm... you want to back up a win partition on a win partition with TM ? Seems not doable for me...

No, not at all. I want to build a simple NAS, and then have two partitions on it. One partition will be HFS+ for Snow Leopard, and the other will be NTFS for Windows backups.

The Mac computer will of course simply use Time Machine to back itself up, and Windows will back itself up using its own automatic system backup programs.

I don't need to have these two partitions be intercompatible at all. I just need to make sure that Time Machine won't try to take over the entire disk or something; that I'll be able to have it visible separately.

 

[Mal]

Yes, that setup will work fine. Only catch, I believe (though since you're talking NAS it may work differently) that TM requires a GUID Partition Map, which means it wouldn't work as a bootable backup for Windows, but if that's not a big deal then no worries at all.

jW

 

[MD5Hash]

Good so far. Next question then, perhaps someone has been in this situation before - a multi-drive NAS. Two drives, for example.

Could one drive be NTFS and the other drive be HFS+? And then I could use some freeware util to make it 'look' like a AFP:// shared drive; I've seen them before, and then just good ol' SMB:// on the other one for windows.

Anyone tried this?