Backup to external HD that also has Mac backup on same drive

[hossfly88]

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!

 

[essenbe]

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.

 

[hossfly88]

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

 

[essenbe]

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.

 

[GeneO]

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.