[Ruahrc]

Santa delivered to me over Christamas a 200GB USB external HD. Yay

Anyways what I want to do with this device is create a backup for my two computers: a Windows XP PC and an Apple Powerbook G4.

My XP PC has a 120GB HD in it, formatted NTFS.
My Powerbook has a 60GB HD in it, formatted in OS X.

Since the sum of my two computers' storage is 180GB, I figured I would use the last 20GB as "long-term temporary" storage (a scratchpad for files, if you will).

Anyways I am having trouble setting it up the way I want. Basically in an ideal world I envision 3 partitions on my external HD:
1) 120GB NTFS partition for my XP backup
2) 60GB HFS+ partition for my PB backup
3) 20GB FAT32 partition for misc. files
(The 20GB Partition needs to be FAT32 so both OS X and XP can read and write to it natively)

Obviously I can't create a partition for HFS+ on XP, but I can create windows partitions in OS X. The problem is that I can't seem to be able to mix the two. If I try to make one partition in OS X a Windows partition, it forces me to make all my partitions windows.

Does anyone know of a solution to this? Do I have to physically separate the Macintosh partitions from the Windows ones on a separate HD (i.e. purchase a second external HD just for backing up my Mac)?

Lastly, I don't know if you guys would know much about this, but can anyone please recommend to me some good backup software? For OS X, I plan on using Synk (since I already have the full version). I understand CCC is pretty good too, and free? What I want from my backup software is simple. Create a complete and bootable copy of my current HD. That's it.

For Windows, however, my new external drive (It's a Maxtor) didn't seem to come with any backup software. I would be willing to pay a reasonable sum for some software so long as it's good, but if there are free ones that's even better. I don't need fancy software with quick restores, or scheduling, or any of that stuff. In fact all I want is for the software to make a complete and bootable image of my existing partitions. Basically what I will do is simply connect the external drive say once a month and completely re-image my two computers' hard disks onto the backup. Then back it goes into storage.

Thanks for any tips or help getting this backup scheme set up!

Ruahrc

[mduell]

Why not make it all one big FAT32 partition?

[Ruahrc]

mudell- I don't understand. Why?

Perhaps let me rephrase the original question in much simpler terms. I have 2 computers. XP NTFS 120GB HD and Mac OS X 60GB HD. I have 1 external USB HD, 200GB. I want to back up the entire contents of both computers onto this external HD. Preferrably making it so that I can boot from these backups. The leftover 20GB of space on the 200GB external I'd like as a miscellaneous partition on which I can put random files from both Windows and Mac. How should I proceed in setting up this backup scheme?

Ruahrc