Should I set up my external hard drive as HFS when copying PC files to MAC

I have just purchased an external hard drive and hooked it up to my PowerMac G5 running OS X. My Mac is networked to a PC via Wi-Fi. When using my Mac I can open/delete/save files to my PC and drag them to my Mac.
I would like to back up my whole PC onto the firewire external drive. I only have a firewire connection on my Mac, so I don't want to unplug it and set it up on the PC as well.
Are there any issues if I format the drive using Disc Utility and format it as HFS, then simply drag the files and applications from my PC to my external hard drive. If the PC fails, will I have any issues when I drag the files back to a networked PC via my Mac?

Backing up an entire hard drive via Wi-Fi would be very slow and perhaps unreliable. I would really look into getting a firewire interface for the PC to accomplish the back-up. These cards are not very expensive and it would be a good investment.
You may have trouble when returning files from an HFS drive to your PC. Some of the files may appear doubled as ._FILENAME and FILENAME. The ._ file is used by Mac OS and is hidden, but is not used by Windows and shows as a separate file. MacDrive6 from MediaFour (http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6//) can solve this problem, as well as allow an HFS+ formatted drive to appear in the Windows explorer when connected via Firewire, but there may still be problems with a backup procedure using drag and drop. It is probably best if you want to do this to format your drive as a Windows drive.
Also, backing up PC application and system files (or Mac ones for that matter) by dragging and dropping is a bad idea. Especially on the PC, but also occasionally on the Mac, applications install files in various system locations that are not easily accessable. It is best to restore applications and system files from the original software installation CD's or DVD's. If this is not possible, or inconvenient, look for a PC backup utility that is similar to Carbon Copy Cloner for the Mac (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html). Utilities such as this can create an image of a hard disk for backup purposes on any drive recognized by the system. I am sure there are many good PC backup utilities available, many probably as freeware.

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