Time Machine external disc formatting

Question

OK, quick question about formatting an external drive. Let me explain what I would like to do with the drive, then we can even see if it is possible.
In the grand scheme of things, I would like take the drive, reformat it and partition it, so that I can run 3 Time Machine backups and the rest of the drive extra space. The first 3 partitions, would be 3 time machines, 1 intel and 2 ppc. The 4th partition, I want to put all of my photos, music and such on it and share that with all computers, including a Windows computer. That way, when we travel, I can just grab that drive and take it with us
Ok, I took the drive, plugged it into an intel mac, formatted it with 4 partitions as a GUID scheme.
Partition 1 - for intel time machine - Mac OS (journaled, case sensitive)
Partition 2 - for PPC Time Machine - Mac OS (Journaled)
Partition 3 - for PPC Time Machine - Mac OS (Journaled)
Partition 4 - Used to bring photos and music when traveling, also used
with windows (MS-Dos)
That did not seem to work.
THEN, I did this:
I took the drive, plugged it into an intel mac, formatted it with 4 partitions as a APM scheme.
Partition 1 - for intel time machine - Mac OS (journaled, case sensitive)
Partition 2 - for PPC Time Machine - Mac OS (Journaled)
Partition 3 - for PPC Time Machine - Mac OS (Journaled)
Partition 4 - Used to bring photos and music when traveling, also used
with windows (Free Space).
Not working. So, first off, is this even possible? Can I use Time Machine, with an external drive hooked up through my Airport Base Station, with partitions? From reading, it doesn't really seem so, but there are scripts to run in terminal, and things like that.
If I can't run it with partitions, I am fine with that, I would just use the one drive, put my photos, music and such, and the 3 sparse bundles all on it, no partitions. It's quite a large drive and I can manage the backups pretty well so space isn't an issue. If this isn't the case, how do I format the drive so both all 3 Macs (1 Intel and 2 PPC) and Windows machines can read it?? Also, I would assume I would need to use the Intel Mac to do the formatting and not the PPC ones.
Make sense? It always seems like I am trying to do something too complicated with things to make it easy on myself.
Thanks

Answer 1

Are any of your Macs desktop models?
If so, there's an alternative. Connect the drive to one of them, and back that Mac up to it directly.
Back up the others to the same drive, via sharing, over your network. See #22 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum), for instructions.
If there's room for all those backups (see #1 in the FAQ,) you could put the 4th MS-DOS partition on it, or you could put it on a separate HD connected to your Airport Extreme.
But note that Time Machine cannot back up a MS-DOS drive, or any drive on a network, so you'll need some other way to back up that data.
However you do it, either GUID or APM will work. While GUID is preferred for an Intel Mac, the only time it's required is if you want to install or update OSX on it. You can "clone" OSX to an APM drive, and it will boot your Intel Mac, but you can't install updates on it.
As Bob says, you might get the backups to work via the Airport Extreme, but most likely they'll start turning up corrupted before long. It's happened to me 3 or 4 times in a bit over a year, and that seems fairly typical of the many, many such posts here and in the Time Machine forums.