External Hard Drive Formatting

So I got a new OWC external drive, and I want to set it up with three partitions. One will be my Time Machine partition, one will be a NTFS partition for Boot Camp, and the third will be FAT32 for easy transfer of files between the two.

I partitioned the drive in Disk Utility, first with all three in OS Extended (Journaled) format, but XP wouldn't recognize any of the partitions. Then, I made only the TM partition OS Extended (Journaled), and had the other two just as "Free Space," but XP still won't recognize any of the partitions. How do I get XP to see those other partitions so I can format them as NTFS and FAT32? Or, is there a way to get OS X to format them that way?

 

Reformat in XP, set up the partitions as 1 NTFS and one FAT32. Make the FAT32 the size of what you want the FAT32 and HFS+[Mac OS Extended (Journaled)] to be. Then in OS X cut the FAT32 partition in half and format what you want to HFS+.

 

OS X cannot format to NTFS.

What you should be able to do, is format the 2 partitions as Fat and the other as extended. In windows, partition the 2 as fat32 and ntfs.
You will have to do this under the admin tools. Computer Management I think is the utility. Under there, you can view your disk and it's partitions. If they are just blank partitions, you should be able to see those as well.

 

Thanks for the tips. How do I get OS X to format something as FAT32? I don't see that option in the Disk Utility partition list.

I'll give the format-in-XP method a shot, see if that works. Does it matter that I'm doing this over FW800? In XP, it still shows that a drive is attached (in the Safely Remove Hardware thing), so I figured it was fine.

 

Another thing that would make everything really simple is to get your hands on a distro of Linux that has NTFS support(Ubuntu 8.04 is out now), and format everything from there.

 

Wouldn't I have to install it and such then? Things are crazy enough for me with XP and OS X...

So I tried doing the format-in-XP method, and I got to make 1 partition of NTFS, but the other I couldn't make FAT32, it would only let me make it NTFS. So I left it unformatted, just partitioned, and went back to OSX to make that Journaled, but when I tried that, it erased all the partitions and made the whole drive Journaled...

Don't really know what to try now...are there any programs for XP or something that let you format any type you want?

 

I believe they call a fat32 partition MS-Dos partition in disk utility. I use both os x and xp a lot and format all my external drives as HFS+ (OS X) and use MacDrive in windows to read and write to them.

 

Yeah, FAT32 is known as MS-DOS (FAT) in Disk Utility. Just format your partitions in that format and you'll be fine.

 

You can do FAT in Disk Utility. Choose MS-DOS (FAT).

 

That's what Live CDs are for

In XP are you formatting via cmd prompt or some other way?

 

Was formatting via the Disk Management utility. It was weird - I'd make the three partitions, then make one NTFS, one FAT32, and leave one partitioned but unformatted. OS X would give me the option of erasing that partition and formatting it, but when I tried to make it Extended (Journaled), it just wouldn't do it (would erase I guess, but leave it as FAT16, oddly). Anyways, I think I finally got it to work - for some reason this time in OS X, in Disk Utility, it let me repartition and make the other 2 partitions FAT32 rather than just "Free Space." So now I have my Extended partition and two FAT32 partitions - hopefully, next time I got to XP, I can just switch one of those to NTFS. If not - I give up.