External HDD question - Mac Vs. Windows compatibility when it's the same computer

So, I'm planning on getting a MBP in about a month to replace my last gen. G5 20" iMac and I'll be getting an external HDD to make up for the smaller HDD in the MBP as well as to back up some important stuff.

I'm planning on partitioning the MBP HDD with OSX on one side for most use and Windows XP on the other for gaming and some other specific uses.

Anyway, I have 2 questions.

1.) Does the Ex. HDD still need to be formatted to FAT32 for both to be able to read/write to the drive? I know I can get software for one side or the other if I'd rather have it formatted in HFS+ or NTFS but I'm curious if the Windows side could read/write to HFS+ because it's on a Mac (doubtful, but I'm curious).

2.) When using Time Machine for backup in Leopard, would it back up the entire drive or just the Mac partition leaving me with a unbacked up Windows partition? Also, does Time Machine care about which format the drive is in when backing up?

Thanks!

Joker_Smilez said:

1.) Does the Ex. HDD still need to be formatted to FAT32 for both to be able to read/write to the drive? I know I can get software for one side or the other if I'd rather have it formatted in HFS+ or NTFS but I'm curious if the Windows side could read/write to HFS+ because it's on a Mac (doubtful, but I'm curious).

Click to expand...

You can get 3rd-party software for Windows to enable it to read HFS+ volumes, though I personally wouldn't want Windows (and all the baggage it brings with it) full write access to my OS X volume.

Out of the box, OS X can read NTFS volumes, and read/write/format FAT32 volumes. Avoid FAT32 like the plague, unless you really want to risk what happened to this guy:
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96232

Read this next link for my ongoing rant on FAT32's limitations and what you need to install to get OS X to have write access to NTFS instead for free:
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=571842&postcount=10

Joker_Smilez said:

2.) When using Time Machine for backup in Leopard, would it back up the entire drive or just the Mac partition leaving me with a unbacked up Windows partition? Also, does Time Machine care about which format the drive is in when backing up?

Click to expand...

From what I understand Time Machine will only back up what's on your mac to an external hard drive and will not back up an external. Also it will not back any windows partitions such as those used with boot camp, parallels and others.