External Harddrive

Hi All,

I'm trying to help my girlfriend here, we've just bought an external hard drive for editing purposes here at PSU and I need to know what the best way to format it is. Should I create different partitions with different formats, or is there a basic format that would work between both windows and macs. I'm not into the whole mac thing, but she has to be for her work here. I do run Linux if there is a possible cross over with a linux swap. Just looking for some information on disk formats and what would be best for her. I have the ability to format and everything, so if someone could throw me some information on what the basic mac formats are and what the differences are I'd appreciate it.
Thanks.

If you format it as FAT32 - both your Windows and Mac and Linux machines will be able to mount the drive and read and write to it - that is the best way to go for compatibility.

How many partitions you put on is up to you - if you wanted you could put a Mac HFS partition on and a FAT32.

HERE is some more information for you to begin with on how to achieve both a Mac HFS partition and a FAT 32 partition on the same external drive.