1TB External Hard drive to suffice as both bootcamp and backup?

Hey guys,
I've got a 2011 macbook pro, 16GB RAM and 500GB Hard Drive. I'm wondering if it would be possible to buy a 1TB external hard drive and partition it in half, and have 1/2 be a bootcamp windows 7 partition and the other be a time machine backup for the mac hd.
Thanks!
Calvin

If you have a 500 GB hard drive, you are going to need more than 500 GB for a Time Machine backup.
Time Machine FAQ
Do you have room for a Boot Camp partition on your hard drive? You could run Windows in a virtual machine. Eliminates need to reboot.
Parallels
VirtualBox
VM Fusion

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how do i format an external hard drive for use on both windows pc and mac book air?

Use exFAT on the PC.
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Have been remiss backing up drives, do it sporadically and have had a few close calls and am now trying to upgrade my skills.
I work with 3 computers - 2 intel MBP Core Duo (one Leopard, one Tiger, difference Ghz, screen size, generation) and PowerPC G4-running Tiger. I read recently you can partition a drive and format one as a bootable drive for an intel, the other for a powerPC.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006061610374449
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I have a further question or questions: I saw an external drive for the Mac 1000GB at OWC!!! Yikes, there is also one for 1500 GB!!!
I wondered how many partitions I could make - can I create a bootable drive in three separate partitions, and use those as a backup drive for each? Money is an issue, I can't afford a drive for each computer, so this would be the most economical.
Could I create a 4th partition, just to move photos, music libraries without their being computer specific (e.g., check share library?)
Is there any advantage in creating a boot drive that just starts the computer, but keep the backup files separate, or is cloning the drive then doing incremental backups the best so it is both a boot drive and a backup?
This is beyond my skill set and I am still fuzzy about backup software and boot drives and how they all interconnect - so far I have just been saving desktops and font folders to my oh so slow USB EXTERNAL HD (200 MB) periodically, or specific key files. Is there anyone who can walk me through this?
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Annexit

Partition the drive using Disk Utility, I'd recommend one bootable clone partition per machine, one partition for archiving (data you want to keep but not on a machine), and optionally one partition for a Time Machine backup for the Leopard system. Use the Apple Partition Map (under options in the Partition tab). Note that you'll read that Intel machines require GUID partition scheme, but that's only for installing the OS from a DVD, not relevant for cloning. You'll want APM to boot the PPC machines. Bootable clones can be sized equal to the internal HDDs being backed up, or slightly smaller. Partitions should be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
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HT201250 I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

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http://www.halfspot.com/use-your-pc-hard-drive-for-time-machine-backup/

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Solved!
Go to Solution.

I've done as you suggested - I did this during a chat session with a support resource from Linksy. Things still behave the same.
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asad.a wrote:
I believe the reasons behind this must have something to do with the errors highlighted by the repair process (as copied above)- errors I don't understand.
Disk Utility can't repair NTFS volumes.
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Message was edited by: lupunus / typo's fixed

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