Partitioning an external hard drive for Mac and Windows.

[maxxpower18]

I have WD My Passport Essential 1TB external hard drive. I have a Toshiba laptop with Windows 7 and a mid-2012 Macbook Pro with OSX Lion. What I want to do is create two equally sized partitions on my external hard drive, one for my Windows 7 files, and another for my Mac files.

My first attempt at this was a failure. I used Windows 7's disk utility to create a 480GB partition in NFTS format. I mounted my external hard drive on my Macbook right after to create a second partition in Mac OS Extended. I was unable to do this because formatting the ext. hard drive in NFTS format won't allow me to create another partition in Mac OS Extended format.

I was considering first erasing my ext. drive using OSX's disk utility in Mac OS Extended format and then using Windows 7's disk utility to create the other partition in NFTS format, though I think then Windows wouldn't let me format it because it's in Mac OS Extended format.

How do you guys suggest I go about doing this? Should I use exFAT instead?

 

[Bubbaleone]

You can partition your HDD to have both HFS+ and NTFS partitions via Disk Utility. Create two partitions; one HFS+ formatted and the other unformatted. Then use Windows Disk Mangement to NTFS format the unformatted partition.

 

[maxxpower18]

^ Thank you sir, it worked like a charm.