Partition External Hard Drive as NTFS and Time Machine Backup

Hi Everyone,

I recently purchased a second external hard drive (1.5 tb caviar green) and would like to use it to archive media as well as a time machine drive. I was wondering, is it possible to partition and format the drive so that the majority of the drive can be used as storage space in NTFS format (so it can be accessible by windows) and then use another format for a 250gb time machine partition. And if so, how might this be done?

I would appreciate any help I could get. Thanks!

forgot to add...

I forgot to mention that I currently have another 2tb external hard drive which is NTFS partitioned. It works great with windows and on my macbook (using macfuse) which is why I would like to use NTFS as the format for my new drive as well.

Yes that can be done.
If you only want 2 partitions on the drive. NTFS and OS X (for time machine) you just use bootcamp to make 2 partitions for the drive. And use bootcamp to make one of those partitions NTFS and install Windows on that.

And on the other partition, just open up the time machine application in OS X. And tell that to use the other partition for time machine. And it will just work.

I think it is possible but it is going to take a bit more than that. Time Machine is going to be looking for a drive/partition that is formatted hfs+.

There is a procedure that I have seen which could do what you need. I tried it once with hfs+and FAT32 but it has since been updated to include NTFS. I encourage you to read the entire thread. I think some improvements to the process were included in the comments. Create an HFS+/NTFS/FAT32 external drive - Mac OS X Hints.

I tested this using the original hint referenced in 2003 and had one problem that might gum up the works for you. The FAT32 partition would mount fine but I sometimes had to manually mount the HFS+ partition. If that is still true it could mean that Time Machine will not back up as automatically as it would with a straight HFS+ partition.