Formatting external drive for Time Machine and Windows

Hey everyone,

I just picked up the new Verbatim 320gb firewire/usb drive for use with Time Machine on my MBP. I have a 250 (around 235) gb hard drive in my laptop so I was hoping to be able to setup a partition to use 250gb for time machine and the rest as a place to swap files between my laptop and the computers in my school lab which are all windows/linux dual boots. Verbatim's support page supposedly says how to format for use on win and mac but when I followed the instructions, it tells you to pick an option that isn't available in Disk Utility. My progress went like this. Plugged in drive, opened disk utility. Partion tab and made one partition of free space (as per Verbatim's instructions). Went to erase tab and it says choose MS-DOS for Mac and Windows users. The only option there is MS-DOS for Windows. When I format to that type, my drive doesn't show for mac. Any ideas?

Terror.

When you set up the 2 partitions, set the Time Machine Partition to Mac OS Extended and the other Partition to MS-DOS (FAT). Time Machine needs a Mac OS Extended formated drive to work. The FAT partition should show up on your desktop though, you just can't use it for Time Machine.

As a side note, if I'm understanding you correctly, you can do all this in the Partition Tab, don't switch over to the erase tab. Once you set it up to have 2 partitions click on each one in the little diagram they have and you can name and format them.