Suggestions for backing up media

[jshelton]

Right now I have my MacBook Pro backed up with Time Machine on a WD 320GB external hard drive. I would like to be able to back up my entire iTunes library and all of my photos from iPhoto on a seperate partition. BUT, I would also like to have the ability to get my music and photos transferred to a Windows machine if I ever need to, move specific albums/photos to a flash drive, etc.

At the moment, I can only retrieve this media by restoring from the TM backup.

If you had the same setup, how would you partition the external, and how would you back up your VERY precious music and photo collection?

Gracias.

 

[Hellhammer]

If there are no files bigger than 4GB, you can use FAT32 which is the most compatible format for OS X and Windows as both can read and write it natively. If those photos and music are precious, I would invest on online backup or at least have two separate backups in different locations in case of theft or fire.

 

[jshelton]

If there are no files bigger than 4GB, you can use FAT32 which is the most compatible format for OS X and Windows as both can read and write it natively. If those photos and music are precious, I would invest on online backup or at least have two separate backups in different locations in case of theft or fire.

So each specific song or picture can't be over 4GB? I can't imagine I would have any single file that is that large. So I can format the external to FAT32 and partition it, using one partition for Time Machine and the other for music and photos?

 

[Hellhammer]

So each specific song or picture can't be over 4GB? I can't imagine I would have any single file that is that large. So I can format the external to FAT32 and partition it, using one partition for Time Machine and the other for music and photos?

Time Machine requires HFS+ so just create a new partition and format the partition to FAT32

 

[jshelton]

Time Machine requires HFS+ so just create a new partition and format the partition to FAT32

Ah, gotcha. Great, thanks for the help.

 

[satcomer]

Don't bend OS X to Windows! Bend Windows to OS X!

I solved my problem with my Windows 7 partition by installed on 7 MacDrive and formatted all my externals Mac OS Extended (native OS X format). Windows with MacDrive treat those disks now as if they were NTFS formatted.