Dual platform external hard drive?

I am trying to partition an external hard drive in both Windows & Mac, for my girlfriend who has a Windows XP desktop and a G4 iBook.
I have noticed that sometimes when I format a drive in DOS using my Mac, somehow a PC still can't read it (I am sure that's a fault of Microsoft, not Apple).
I would guess the best way would be to partition the drive into two partitions using DOS, then plug into the Mac, and format one of the partitions into OS X. (I know that Mac can read anything the PC can format, but not vice-versa.)
So how would I use Windows XP to partition a drive? Is there a step by step guide somewhere?
Thanks - and I apologize for the fact that my girlfriend has a DOS machine. It was a gift from her Dad.
W

See this user tip about formats you can use:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=965293&tstart=0
Boot Camp offers a sort of partition also for Intel Mac and Windows machines. You might want to see if anyone successfully in the Boot Camp forum has made a dual boot external drive.

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