Partitioning: time machine and mac/windows

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

Hi! 
I just bought the WD My Passport 3.0

I have both a mac and a windows computer. 

How do i make one part for Time Machine and the other part for both Windows and Mac?

How much space should the Time Machine part be? 
And last: I want to avoid installing software to do this (if it is possible to avoid it).

Thank you soo much! :smiley:

2

Hi there, here are a few things to consider if you want any drive to work on the 2 systems:

*NTFS is the best format for Windows but it’s read-only on Macs;

*The best File System (format) for Macs is HFS+, but it will only work on Macs and nothing else;

*You can format a drive as FAT32, which would allow it to work on BOTH Windows and Mac, but it won’t do automatic backups, won’t take files larger than 4GB and will have a high risk of data corruption;

*You can format it as exFAT, but only works on Macs 10.6.5+ and PCs running Vista SP1 or later, but does not have any of the drawbacks as FAT32, so you can do automatic backups on both systems (Then again, it needs updated computers to use that configuration);

*You can have a drive as NTFS to allow to work on any PC and then install on your Mac a free app from the Apple website called NTFS-3G, which allows your Mac to fully use (read and write) to NTFS and also do automatic backups with no restrictions on both systems, but since it is done using the NTFS-3G software, this configuration will only work on YOUR Mac and the others will only read from the drive (But they won’t be able to add files).

*You can have the drive as HFS+ to allow you to use it on any Mac and then install on Windows a program called  MacDrive, which is a software able to allow full HFS+ integration on a PC, meaning that it is the exact opposite to NTFS-3G. However the same rules apply, only PCs with this software will see drives formatted for Macs.

You can make the partitions on disk utility on the Mac (Go> utilities> disk utility), the partition for Time Machine needs to be HFS+ and it should be as big (Or small) as you want…

Best of luck!

3

Thank you so much! :open_mouth:

How do I proceed? 
Do I have to part the disk first, then make one of the parts time machine and the other one NTFS?
How do I do it? Sorry… I’m very new to all this :slight_smile:

And also: Is it possible to use on both mac and windows (transver files back and forth on the NTFS part), or do i have to have the NTFS-3G installed on every mac I use it with? 

Thank you! :smiley:

4

An NTFS partition allows you to see all the Windows files on a Mac and to copy them out, but it will not let you add files from the Mac without NTFS 3-G.

Create the 2 HFS+ partitions on the Mac with different sizes on the partition section of disk utility, then remember the size of the partition you want for Windows and format it on the PC using disk management (Right-click on computer/my computer> manage> disk management), the 2 Mac partitions will appear unallocated to the PC, just initialize the drive with the same partition table (Should be selected GUID on the Mac and then GPT on Windows) and format the partition you want…

You can also leave a partition ready to be formatted on Windows if you format it as FAT32 (MAster Boot Record) on the Mac, Windows should see that partition and you should be able to format it NTFS without initializing… But in case you still need to, then you should initialize the Windows partition as MBR this time (The partition table needs to be the same provided on the 2 computers).

You can also use MiniTool Partition Wizard on Windows to only touch the partition you want and fully ignore the other one.

:slight_smile:

5

Oh… 
I wish I understood what you just wrote… But I don’t :/ 
Is there any tutorial on it? With images?.. 
Thank you for answeing so quick! :slight_smile: Sorry that I don’t understand! :/ 

6

Here you have a basic tutorial that will get you started and will let you create at least one of the partitions, the rest is just understanding the tools that you will use :slight_smile: