External Drive - NTFS to FAT32

[fenixx]

Excuse my noobness, I am newly Mac-turned (now Mac-obsessed) from a PC and am still working out the issues of transitioning.

Anyhow - this is my question..
I understand that Mac has restricted permissions on a NTFS external hard drive, and I need to create a partition to FAT32... I was curious as to if there is a way to partition the drive without losing the current files that are on the hard drive.

Also, any recommended way to correctly partition the drive?

For the record, its a Maxtor II OneTouch 160GB 7200rpm drive.
I'm using the MBP 2.0 100GB HD 1Gb Ram.

Thanks!

 

[Eidorian]

I'd say backup all the stuff and then just reformat and partition the drive to FAT32. I've played with Partition Magic on Windows. I don't know of any programs like that for OS X though.

 

[grapes911]

I don't know of any programs like that for OS X though.

There is a Linux command line utility called parted (Partition Editor). It can resize HFS partitions. You'll have too get a bootable Linux CD though. I know the Gentoo install disk has it, and I'm sure others do it.