Hi...new here... have a partition question

#1

I just bought a 1TB My Book external drive, because I’m interested in getting into page layout, graphic design, community service fliers (and eventually, photo management, clip art and font storage, video, etc.), as much a personal hobby as an opportunity to assist friends and others in the community. Hence, a storage device! (See? I’m learning already! smile)

What I’m curious about is the idea of partitioning… would that be something useful to me on my own personal computer and HD at home, and if so, in what way?  Thanks!

#2

Are you limited to Windows or Mac or both?

Please note, there is different partition for Windows (NTFS) and Mac (HFS+J) in short.

If you a requirement to use both, you can use FAT32, but limited to 4GB file size limit.

USB should is suitable for most application (slower than Firewire/1394) and seem bit more reliable.

Make sure not to drop the drive is most important thing to remember.

#3

Thanks for reply…I’m just running Windows XP,  and plan to use the My book for storage of documents I’m going to generate (during my “learning period” at first…then ultimately with “real” documents). I also plan to use it to back up my littlle old 55 GB internal drive… and *maybe someday* buy a bigger, better computer…

I’m just an old, retired techie who’s getting back into computers after 20 years or so…I’ve puchased a home productivity bundle which includes writing, drawing, photo, movie, Web page development software with added clipart, fonts, templates, etc… looks pretty decent and comes with good recommendations from friends of mine…anyway, I’m pursuing it as a kind of hobby thing right now, with an eye on making newsletters, posters, photo imaging, who knows? … just having fun, but it makes sense to me to have more than 55 Gigs of storage capability, so I bought the 1TB drive. I’m inclined to think that partitioning it is not particularly necessary or useful to me, but I’m open to feedback on that.

#4

princedugan,

Welcome back to PC life.

It will be pretty hard to fill up 1TB unless you store HD video content.

Have fun as you mentioned.  Let me know if you have any specific questions.