Reformatting new External HD - Recommendations?

[tricky]

I recently purchased a 1TB MyBook external drive. I am hooking it up to my airport extreme to use as a network drive. I am also thinking about attempting to use time machine wirelessly. If I can't or do not feel comfortable with the backups I'm getting (since wireless backups, other than time capsule, are not officially supported by Apple), I will probably just connect my laptop a few times a week to get a backup. The other space I will be using for my music collection, photos, movies, etc.

That being said, I am looking for advise on how to format/partition the drive. From what i've read, I need to either format the entire drive as Mac Extended (journaled) or at least a partition of it in order to use time machine. If I do the entire drive, PC's will not be able to read the drive. Is that correct? My current HD that I would be backing up is 120GB. I may end up getting a bigger drive in the future...250GB. What would be a good size for the time machine partition?

So if you just got a 1TB drive, and wanted to use part of it for time machine, and the other space for music/movies, how would you format it? Thanks!

 

[knux11]

i'd say format it half and half. get macdrive if you want windows to see the drives.

 

[iShater]

I recommend 3 partitions:

120GB (At least to be close to your internal) - use for cloning your internal drives for disaster recovery.
500 GB (Time machine or any other backup) - You could use less, it all depends on your backup scheme.
xyz GB - Whatever is left to use as storage/scratch, etc.

 

[gwsat]

My Time Capsule is formatted as it came from the manufacturer but I don’t know what that is. I was able to map my Time Capsule as a network drive within the XP installation I made to my VMware Fusion partition. My XP installation’s primary function is to support Quicken 2008 for Windows. I had been using a Quicken Backups folder I had created on a USB flash drive for backups of my Quicken data files. I was able to copy the Quicken Backups folder from the USB drive to the TC without incident. Since then I have been backing up Quicken to the TC without any problems. I don’t know why this works, exactly, but it does.

 

[CWallace]

MacDrive will allow Windows to read OS X drives, however it is payware.

There is also an open source freeware utility that will allow you to mount and read an OS X drive in Windows, but I forget the name.

 

[tricky]

Thanks for the replies. I did a 50/50, but I may end up trying a few different set ups. I don't know if i'm crazy about how time machine functions anyway. It will take some time to get used to.