Hi,
I'm trying to backup Win7 to an external HD that currently is used to backup mac. Can anyone help explain what I need to do to make this happen? I'm sure I'll have to format the ext HD then backup the mac using a different file format, but am unsure just what I'll have to do or how to do it.
TIA!
I assume the external drive is formatted HSF+. If you want to keep using it for the Mac, you can partition the drive with 1 partition HSF+ and the other partition NTFS for windows. Failing that, the Mac can read from but not write to NTFS.
Thank you so much for the reply! You're exactly right, the external HD is formatted HSF+ and i want to continue using it for the mac. Can you help me with just how to partition it with one partition HSF+ and the other NTFS? And would I partition it from the mac or the pc? I apologize, I really don't know the steps to do this.
Thanks again,
Steve
I probably can't help as I am not familiar with a Mac at all. On a PC, go to disk management and try to right click the drive and select shrink partition. If you are able to do that, select the space to shrink in MB (1024MB=1GB), it will create unallocated space. Right click the unallocated space and select new simple partition. Just follow the steps from there. It will create a NFTS partition.
You can format the disk exFAT and both Windows 7 and the MAC can read/write to the disk. However I do not know if Time Machine can do anything but HFS as it utilizes sparse files.
Otherwise it is a little tricky in what order you format the drive. I have an external with an HFS partition and a NTFS partition. I believe I had to format the HFS on the MAC first followed by the NTFS on the Windows 7.
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