ext firewire HDD partitioning question
 

I have Windows experience but am just getting started with my new iMac running Tiger. I'd like to buy a pair of external HDDs and switch back and forth between them to do a weekly full backup of my iMac and WinXP box. Ideally each week I'd back up both machines to one of the two external HDDs, bring that one off site, then the next week I'd do the same with the other.

I understand that the registered version SuperDuper will enable me to use the Smart Update feature to keep a bootable copy of my iMac HDD up to date easily on an external firewire HDD.

Now for my question. Is there a way to put two partitions on this external firewire HDD, the first one being os x native (for superduper), and the second being NTFS? If so, then I can also plug the HDD into my winxp box and backup to this second partition. I understand that the second partition would not be bootable.

I have not yet purchased the external HDD. If I cannot combine both disk formats on one drive then I will need to purchase a pair of drives each for the iMac and the WinXP box.

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

While you can share a drive like that, you won't likely be able to boot from the Mac side, since you'll have to use "Master Boot Record" as the partitioning scheme, and -- in my experience -- Macs won't boot HFS+ from MBR.

Thanks very much.

Dave's right, of course. But I use mac drive software which lets my windows machine view and access files from my Mac formatted external FW drive (which is GUID partitioned, mac bootable).

www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive

$50 solution