Partition strategy for external HD

speedbird · Jan 26th, 2006, 10:13 PM

I have 15" iMac G4 800mhz machine, running 10.4.4.

I just got an 200GB external FW harddrive which I plan on using primarily to back up my machine and store files. I'd also like to play around with Linux and have it installed on this drive and wouldn't mind having the ability to attach the drive to a Windows machine in order to transfer data.

Can anyone suggest a partition strategy?

thanks.

kps · Jan 27th, 2006, 08:31 AM

Since no one is answering your question, I'll throw out some non-scientific-wilda$$ guesses to start it off.

1/ perhaps you're asking that external to do too much?
2/ Linux, the Mac and the PC use different file systems.
3/ The PC may not be able to read the Mac partition without a third party utility.
4/ The PC may read from the Linux partition...maybe.
5/ Linux may not read from the Mac partition...unless thing have changed in newer distos. Linux can read HFS but not HFS+
6/ AFAIK, The Mac can not read, see or mount the Linux partition.
7/ Not sure about the overall state of FW support on PCs. Does the external also have USB2?
8/ I'm not sure, but can Linux be booted off of a FW external?

Someone will come along shortly to elaborate on my guesses...

9mmCensor · Jan 27th, 2006, 10:25 AM

Both Windows and Linux can read FAT32 filesystems. You may be able to access a FAT32 partion from MAC OS X.