External HDD: As windows boot and Time-Machine

Hi guys, firstly I've been a.. well, short time reader and decided to start a topic of my own. I bought a uni-body MB about 2 months ago and it's going great!

I currently have used Boot-camp to install Win XP on a 10GB partition on my MB. However I wanted to make use of my old (windows formated) 200 GB HDD to do the following; (and I know I can just google it all and I'll find the answers, but I thought it would be better to get advice from people who might have done the same before...)

1) Format the HDD (which tool to use?)
2) Partition the HDD into 2 sections (again what is the best tool and what should the relative sizes be?)
3) Use one partition to store backups via time machine (how to set up?)
4) Use the second partition to BOOT windows XP from (need the most help with this...)

Now is this possible and secondly how useful is it? Will time machine back up ALL my personal files; i.e. make an exact copy of HD contents minus the OS? And will XP boot from USB? What if the USB is not connected and I choose to boot windows - will my MB spontaneously combust?

I realize it's a long post which asks for a lot of information, but any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Harry

Let's see if we can answer some of these:

1. Format the HDD with Disk Utility. Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility.

2. Again, use Disk Utility. Two partitions? I would format to one. See why below.

3. Make sure the HDD is formatted as HFS Journaling (HFS +) as Time Machine will not work with other formats.

4. XP will NOT boot from an external HDD. It's not legal to do so (MS EULA) and it will refuse to boot anyway. Thus, my answer above about using only one partition for the HDD.

Time Machine will backup everything and will allow a complete re-install of the OS in the event you have an internal HDD failure.

And again, you can not boot XP from an external drive, USB or whatever.

Regards.

Hi thanks for the quick reply. OK so looks like I will be keeping XP on my MP internal drive. If time-machine creates a complete restore point, then should I allocate the same HD space that my MB has to the partition on the external, i.e. 160 GB? Then I can use the remaining 40GB as an external drive for XP, i.e.:

Partition 1; 160 GB HFS+
Parition 2; 40 GB NTFS

dc2b18c said:

Hi thanks for the quick reply. OK so looks like I will be keeping XP on my MP internal drive. If time-machine creates a complete restore point, then should I allocate the same HD space that my MB has to the partition on the external, i.e. 160 GB? Then I can use the remaining 40GB as an external drive for XP, i.e.:

Partition 1; 160 GB HFS+
Parition 2; 40 GB NTFS

Click to expand...

You can do it that way if you like. However, that would require having two different formats on the external. HFS+ and FAT-32.

I personally have two external hard drives. One for backup purposes formatted to HFS+ (same size as my internal HDD). The other is my general purpose drive formatted to FAT-32 which can be read by OS X and my Windows PC.

Regards.