Partition of external firewire drive

[psakw]

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.

[dnanian]

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.

[psakw]

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

[dnanian]

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

[psakw]

Thank you for all your help, it worked.