One WD ext. 2T HD networked, two OSs...

[Watermonkey]

I hope I can do this. I just bought a Belkin WIFI router that has a network storage USB port on it. I just bought a WD 2Tb mybook external drive and hooked it in to the back of the router and installed the necessary software on my Dell laptop (XP) as well as the MBP running Leopard. I'm assuming I need to partition the drive using disk utilities because the Mac needs it to be formatted especially for it and XP needs to see a FAT file system. I guess I'm wondering if I can do it and what pitfalls I should expect. Does anyone have a step-by-step for this kind of setup? Do I need to format the Windoz partition with the Windoz 'puter?

Just to be clear, I intend to use the drive for backing up both computers and for general storage of each of the two computers. Should I create four partitions? Is it possible to partition a partition after formatting the other partition to FAT32 or whatever?

 

[Bacong]

I hope I can do this. I just bought a Belkin WIFI router that has a network storage USB port on it. I just bought a WD 2Tb mybook external drive and hooked it in to the back of the router and installed the necessary software on my Dell laptop (XP) as well as the MBP running Leopard. I'm assuming I need to partition the drive using disk utilities because the Mac needs it to be formatted especially for it and XP needs to see a FAT file system. I guess I'm wondering if I can do it and what pitfalls I should expect. Does anyone have a step-by-step for this kind of setup? Do I need to format the Windoz partition with the Windoz 'puter?

You can format the drive MS-DOS (FAT32) and it will be read/write on both Windows and OS X.

 

[Watermonkey]

I was just reading through the search results (why search first when you can post a question then look like an idiot when you see the question has been asked ad nausium?) and it looks like I'll be good to make three partitions: Mac HFS+ for Timemachine, FAT32 for shared files, and NTFS for Windoz backup. Can the Mac do all of this or am I going to need to use the Dell for formatting the Windoz partitions? I'd just do it and answer my own question but the wife stole my Mac and is using it at this point in time so I'll have to wait till I can actually do it...

So I plugged the drive directly into the Mac and partitioned the drive. I created two FAT partitions and one HFS+. I set Time Machine to backup the Mac then I dismounted the drive and brought it back to the router. When I plugged it in to the router, it wouldn't connect. Don't know why yet. So I plugged it into the back of the Dell and went to work again. The software that came on the drive somehow managed to survive the partitioning and I'm using that to backup that drive as I type this. The hangup I've got right now is that the drive won't connect to the router now that I've partitioned it. I wonder why...

2nd edit: I re-formatted the backup partition for the Windoz side to be NTFS. Still the drive won't mount to the router for some reason.

3rd edit: I'm betting now that the router doesn't like partitions on the hard drive being connected to it. Lame...