Formatting Hard Drive to use with TM and Windows

I hope this is not a strange question. I have new iMac with 500GB, and a Windows XP system that I'd like to use with my new eGO 1TB USB drive.
Will this work:
- Partition 750GB for Time Machine
- Partition 250GB to allow my Mac to store files permanantely, as well as being accessible by Windows XP.
I assume that there is a drive formatting process that allows this? In other words can one Partition be 'Mac Only' and the other 'Mac and PC'?
I am hoping that I can unplug the USB from the Mac, and take the eGo to the XP system, and have the 250GB Partition be accessible.
Am I on the right path here?

select the whole drive (model, not name) in disk utility and click on the partition tab. set the number of partitions to two and click on options. in the resulting popup set the partition scheme to GUID. then click on each partition and change the formats to Mac os extended journaled for the first 1 and to MS DOS (FAT) for the second one. finally, hit "apply".

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    Message was edited by: Fortuny

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