Partition of external firewire drive
 

I am not a guru but just a end user so please forgive the question. After reading everything I could find including the 60 page user's guide and FAQ's I still have a question.
I bought a firewire external hard drive (500gb) for my laptop which has a 120gb harddrive in it of which 77 gb's is being used. I am presuming that I should partition the firewire drive to put my backup on it since I want to store other items on the firewire drive that are not on my internal hard drive (ie: movies and photos) . Then I presume I should have a second partition to put the 'sandbox' on the firewire drive. How big do I make each partition?
If this is the way to do the back up's. If not please tell me how to do it.

Yes, you'll partition the drive. Given how you describe yourself, I don't think you need a Sandbox. Here's what to do:

• Start Disk Utility
• Select the external drive hardware in the sidebar
• Click the Partition tab
• Click Options
• Choose the proper partition scheme (GUID for Intel macs, Apple Partition Map for Power PC) and accept the page
• Use the UI to divide the drive into a 120GB partition for your internal drive and the rest for the other. Use "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" as the format type and name appropriately
• Click Partition.

Hope that helps.

Can't find partition
 

I opened disk utility but there is no tab that says partition. I have looked everywhere. I am running Tiger.

That's because you didn't select the external drive hardware in the sidebar.

Done
 

Thank you for all your help, it worked.