Advice requested on external hardrive

I have a Dell xp400 which runs on Vista and a dell inspiron 8600
notebook which runs on xp and which I use mainly for storing and playing
music files. I would like to get an external hard drive to backup my
entire xp400 computer and only the music files on my inspiron 8600.
The external hard drives I have looked at don't seem to be able to back
up files from two different operating systems on two different computers.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Barry

"Barry Howze" <> wrote in message
news:47e12b03$0$24123$...
>I have a Dell xp400 which runs on Vista and a dell inspiron 8600 notebook
>which runs on xp and which I use mainly for storing and playing music
>files. I would like to get an external hard drive to backup my entire
>xp400 computer and only the music files on my inspiron 8600.
> The external hard drives I have looked at don't seem to be able to back up
> files from two different operating systems on two different computers.
> Does anyone have any suggestions?
> Barry


Western Digital or Seagate in no particular order. Have a look around here
and you can see short user reviews on the model(s) you're interested in:

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCateg...al-Hard-Drives

Also, a second good online vendor:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductList3.jsp

Hi!

> I would like to get an external hard drive to backup
> my entire xp400 computer and only the music files
> on my inspiron 8600.

> The external hard drives I have looked at don't
> seem to be able to back up files from two
> different operating systems on two different
> computers.

> Does anyone have any suggestions?

The backup software that comes bundled with some external hard drives
can usually only back up one computer at a time.

However, what you want to do is not impossible, and you may already
have everything you need. A simple way to do what you want is to split
the drive into two partitions--one for each computer. Format both
partitions as NTFS. On the computer that you want to back up
everything on, use the Windows Backup program and back up to a file on
the external hard drive. (This is why you need to use NTFS on the
external drive--FAT32 has a 4GB maximum file size limit.)

For the computer with the music, use the second partition and just
copy the folder(s) that contain all the music.

Deleting, adding and formatting new disks/partitions is done using the
Disk Management utility, which is found in the Control Panel under
Administrative Tools. All your drives and their partitions will show
up here.

William

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:02:26 -0400, Barry Howze <>
wrote:

>I have a Dell xp400 which runs on Vista and a dell inspiron 8600
>notebook which runs on xp and which I use mainly for storing and playing
>music files. I would like to get an external hard drive to backup my
>entire xp400 computer and only the music files on my inspiron 8600.
>The external hard drives I have looked at don't seem to be able to back
>up files from two different operating systems on two different computers.
>Does anyone have any suggestions?
>Barry


Music files should be independent of any OS so they can just be copied
over so essentially you should be dealing with just Vista therefore.

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:08:34 -0500, "S.Lewis"
<> wrote:

>
>"Barry Howze" <> wrote in message
>news:47e12b03$0$24123$.. .
>>I have a Dell xp400 which runs on Vista and a dell inspiron 8600 notebook
>>which runs on xp and which I use mainly for storing and playing music
>>files. I would like to get an external hard drive to backup my entire
>>xp400 computer and only the music files on my inspiron 8600.
>> The external hard drives I have looked at don't seem to be able to back up
>> files from two different operating systems on two different computers.
>> Does anyone have any suggestions?
>> Barry
>
>
>Western Digital or Seagate in no particular order. Have a look around here
>and you can see short user reviews on the model(s) you're interested in:
>
>http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCateg...al-Hard-Drives
>
>Also, a second good online vendor:
>
>http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductList3.jsp
>
>
>
Don't know about the Seagate external but I purchased the Western
Digital 1TB external and as I have some video files to backup needed
to reformat the drive as NTFS. The WD comes as fat32 I guess so that
it is compatable with MS and Apple.

Art