Need help with an external HD

[TaylorB]

Hello everyone, first of all thanks for helping me or contributing to this thread. I recently bought a Maxtor One Touch external harddrive. Its 100GB and I am having a hard time figuring out what and how I am going to partition it and use it. I want to eventually get bootcamp on my Mac. But I don't know how to partition it correctly so that my MBP can read and write on it and so that the windows side of my MBP can read and write on it. I would just like to know how you guys would suggest that I go about doing this. Thank you for all of your help!

edit: I also want it so I can hook it up to my windows machine and be able to easily use things that are on my PC to my Mac. Thanks again.

 

[gr8tfly]

FAT32 is the way to go. Both the Mac and Windows will read and write to it. You should be able to leave it as a single partition, if you like.

 

[TaylorB]

Okay, I heard from someone that Windows with the FAT32 thing is very difficult. He said something about not being able to have long file names and it was like windows 95 all over again. Do you think that will be a problem for like Steam games or anything like that?

 

[Temujin]

Okay, I heard from someone that Windows with the FAT32 thing is very difficult. He said something about not being able to have long file names and it was like windows 95 all over again. Do you think that will be a problem for like Steam games or anything like that?

Don't go with FAT32, it will only support file-sizes up to around 4 Gb.

MacDrive will do the trick. Install the thing on your MBP XP partition or any other XP system, and you will be able to read and write from and to any Mac formatted drive.

Installed on your MBP XP partition it will enable you to see and use the Mac partition on the MBP.

I use it with my MBP and my external drive on a daily basis and love it.

 

[TaylorB]

Don't go with FAT32, it will only support file-sizes up to around 4 Gb.

MacDrive will do the trick. Install the thing on your MBP XP partition or any other XP system, and you will be able to read and write from and to any Mac formatted drive.

I use it on a daily basis and love it.

Okay, thank you. What would you suggest I format the mac side to then?

 

[Temujin]

Okay, thank you. What would you suggest I format the mac side to then?

I think it's called "Mac Journaled", just the standard Mac format.


EDIT.
External: Mac Journaled
MBP: Macs side = Mac Journaled, XP side = NTFS

This is how I would do it

 

[TaylorB]

I think it's called "Mac Journaled", just the standard Mac format.

Okay, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

 

[Temujin]

Okay, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

Happy to help