External Hard drive question

Hey guys!

Just about to receive my new MacBook Pro 15" Retina. This will be my forst MAC after years and years of PC use.

I have one question about setting up time machine on an external hard drive. I realize that the partition that time machine uses has to be formatted as MAC OS Extended and that this will not work with PC. Is it possible to format only the partition I need for time machine this was and format the rest of the drive so it could be used with my PC (Win7 and Linux)?

Thank you in advance.

Phad

Yes, it's possible. Keep in mind that the drive will have to be large enough to accommodate the TM backups in addition to whatever you'll use it for otherwise. Also, if you need to use it for Windows and Linux, you can go with FAT-32 or NTFS (assuming you use the NTFS driver for Linux).