[SusanG]

I'm a recent convert to Macs from Windows, but I haven't been able to escape Windows completely, so I have an iMac connected to a MacBook via a wireless network, the iMac running both Mac OS X and Windows XP. I also have a LaCie d2 Big Disk (500Gb) so that I can backup both machines. The iMac has a 250Gb HD, the MacBook an 80Gb HD.

The hard drive on the iMac has been partitioned, 150Gb for Mac OS X and 100Gb for Windows XP. The Windows partition has been formatted using NTFS because there is almost no crossover between the programs on the two partitions of the hard disk.

I've asked LaCie's Technical Support whether, given this configuration, I should partition the LaCie disk, using Apple Disk Utility, into 3 sections (at least), then format two of them in Mac OS Extended format (for the iMac and MacBook), transfer to Windows XP and format the third partition using NTFS. Or would it be better to partition and format the whole LaCie drive in FAT 32 (although I am really confused about the FAT32 size limitations). Their documentation seems to recommend both as being the best thing to do, which is confusing. So far, other than an automated acknowledgement, there has been no response from LaCie and I'm getting desperate!

Any help/advice from anyone who has solved this problem would be greatly appreciated.

SusanG

[SusanG]

I thought I would let anyone reading this thread know that LaCie has finally come back to me and advised, well that I could do either really, but it has helped me to decide to partition the disk into four and format all of them as FAT 32 and it seems to be working OK, except that the four partitions are slow to mount to the desktop, but I can live with that. Apparently my misgivings about the size of FAT 32 partitions being limited only applies in Windows, in OS X they can be huge, so there's another example of why Macs are best!

SusanG