Sharing an external HD with windows

I have a WD 250gb hard drive that I want to get about 50gb off of and onto a pc. I plugged it into the pc through the usb port, but 'my computer' won't recognize it. When I go into the device manager, it's listed there and gives me the option to remove it and update drivers, yet I can't access it through the file tree. When took it out of the box originally I just plugged it into my mac and started putting things on there, so I don't remember how it was formatted or know if I did anything particular to it. The info window in OS shows it as having a 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' format, and I have no idea what this means.
Point is, I need help in finding a way to get this stuff onto a PC, and I don't know how. I only have about 10gb free, and I'd like to not lose all the other info that is currently on there, so I hope that my only option isn't reformatting it and losing the data. Thanks for reading.

Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

That is the disk format and filesystem for os X so a pc will not see that disk without extra software.

Are you using an Intel Mac? If so you can partition your external without loosing data and create a 50gig partition in FAT32 format that your PC will see.

You have to use the unix command line for this.

http://www.macworld.com/article/55274/2007/02/marchgeekfactor.html

Yes, I do have an intel. When I do th fat32 partition, will my mac still be able to use that portion?

Qslim said:

Yes, I do have an intel. When I do th fat32 partition, will my mac still be able to use that portion?

Click to expand...

yes - macs can read and write windows disks since as long as I can remember