Partition format help

I need help formating my external HD. I was told my another member (eric) that I can partition the HD as Fat32 and HFS+ (?). He suggested that others might be able to help me with that here. If anyone can provide me with the help I would greatly appreciate the help.
Thanks,
-b.

if no one else has time right now, i can help when i get home from work (since i'm on a windows machine at work). it'll be a little while though.

i'm sure someone will be able to walk through the steps in disk utility for you before that though .

thanks eric. I just wan to make sure I don't screw something up.

Oh crap....I must have been forgotten. If anyone cares to walk me through this, I'd greatly appreciate it!

ok, here we go...

1) remove any additional media or disks you may have in the mac - this will make everything a bit easier. also, make sure you've backed up anything you want to save off of the drive.

2) open disk utility. at this point, you should only see a disk at the top and one or more partitions under your main disk. don't touch this disk!

3) mount the external drive. you will see two or more additional items show up in the window on the left of disk utility under your main disk.

4) select the newly mounted disk. i can't really tell you what the name will be, but it should start with the size of the disk.

5) select the "partition" button near the top of the tool. (partition will only be visible if you have the actual disk selected. - again, make sure you don't have the top most disk selected!)

6) if you only have one partition on the disk, you should be able to click "split" to create a second partition. You can also select the number of partitions from the "volume scheme" drop down.

7) now you can choose the sizes of the two partitions by dragging the horizontal line between the partitions.

8) click on one of the boxes/partitions. name it, and select the format.
make one "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" for large files
make the other "MS-DOS File System"

9) double check your selections for size, format, and name. if you are ok with your choices, click the "partition" button in the lower right corner.
you will be prompted one time to either cancel or partition the disk.

10) you will see a progress bar on the lower portion of the disk utility tool. the drive should also unmount and then mount back to finder and/or your desktop. once the bar goes away and the drive(s) mount to finder/your desktop you should be good to go!

Two question.

First, can I select how large I want the partition? I'm not sure if this is proper terminology but what I'm wondering is: Can I allocate 1/3 of the space for FAT32 (windows based stuff)?

Second, my hope is that I would be able to put 1 windows based program (AutoCAD LT - I was told less than 1Gb for program) on this HD so that I could use it on my mac. I have read that with bootcamp program, it is possible. I want to allow myself the ability to work on classwork at home with my mac or in the library where there is no Macs. I hope this makes sense. If I can't do this or it's too much of a problem, it's alright (sucks...but it will be fine), I'll make do.

***The system requirements for that program is only 512mb if that makes any difference***

first question, see step 7. the horizontal line between the partitions can be dragged up and down. this will allow you to make the windows partition about 1/3 the size of the drive as you need.

programs in windows can be put on partitions other than the boot partition. my one concern may be the performance of program that resides on a usb or even firewire drive. it may be considerably slower than a program installed to an internal drive. you could try it, and then uninstall if you are dissatisfied with the performance.

sweet, I understand what you are saying about the speed of the program running from the usb. i figure i'll give it a try and them make a decision from there. the only other question i have in regards to window based program is, there's no way to put that program on the internal drive if speed it an issue, is there? the program is certainly a windows based program. i'm thinking it's not but then again, i know nothing!

well, you could use parallels or bootcamp to run windows from your mac. you'd have to anyway if you wanted to run any windows program (reliably anyway) even from an external drive.

search the forums for either app - there's lots of information on both of them.

Crap... I get to step 8 no problem. However, in the format drop down menu for the FAT32 partition, I only have the following choices:
Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Mac OS Extended
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, journaled)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive)
UNIX File System
Free Space

I see nothing about MS-DOS file system. Is the UNIX the same thing?

i've read a little about the msdos not showing up. however, other postings on other forums say to erase and start over. but i've already done that and it's not show up. that would lead me to believe that by erasing it again, i'll get the same results.

secondly, in messing around in disc utilities i clicked on options within partition and saw something about a master boot record. it's description says something about 'use with devices that require a dos-compatible or windows-compatible partition'. would that need to be checked? as it sits now, the apple partition map is selected.

after posting this, i decided to select the windows-compatible partition' option instead of apple partition map, clicked ok and noticed it gave me an option for ms-dos file system. i'm going to hold off on trying this until i receive word that it's fine for me to do that. i figure i won't hear back until tomorrow morning but that's fine...i'll be sleeping myself!

i think you're ok with your last option.

that's the great thing about reformatting a disk. if you mess up, you just do it again.

Ok....it's partitioned. I've saved a small pdf file to the windows partition and I'll try to access it from the pc's at the college. Just to clarify, there isn't much that I can really do to mess it up right? Just reformat. Is there damage that takes place for constant reformatting?

nope. since really all you're doing is writing to a very small portion of the disk. it's as safe as editing a file - except that anything on the disk is essentially deleted.

Good news....was able to open the pdf which was saved on the windows partition on the pc at college. Printed it just fine. Happy camper!!!

Bad news...well more like unsure news. Attempted to 'eject' usb correctly within 'my computer' and lower right status bar but it wouldn't allow me to do so. Nothing was open or anything. I would just get the message that it can't do it at that time and to try again later. If no program is open from that drive, what would be other causes for something like that? If it makes any difference, I plugged it into my MBP and was able to 'eject' the drive without any problems. Just one more reason I love my mac!!!

yeah, sometimes on windows, device manager just won't let go of a drive. i've gone so far as to close everything i was running, and even a few background programs, and delete temp files (and empty the trash) and still no luck. if that's the case, and you know you don't have any files on the external open, then you're probably safe just to yank it (on windows anyway ).