Windows and OS-X partitions on external drive

Has anyone had any experience/problems with partitioning an external drive for OS-X and Windows?
How about 3 partitons: HFS+, FAT32, NTFS. Or is that pushing my luck too far?
I just received a new LaCie, primarily for backing up Vista Ult 64-bit, but if I can also use it for XP and OS-X that would be great.
Any information will be most appreciated.
Message was edited by: nerowolfe

Moonlight Mac wrote:
I've used an external USB2 drive to boot XP, but it is a very dicy process, and not really worth it in the end. You can slipstream USB boot support into the XP installer, but when you are done, you won't have virtual memory support (no pagefile). It also requires that the internal drive be removed during installation (if XP sees an internal drive, it will insist on attempting to use it for a pagefile.)
I've done the same with a 4GB flash memory card... but booting was hit or miss.
I've partitioned my internal into 2 HFS and 1 NTFS partition, and that works very well when combined with MacDrive on the PC side. I'd stick with using the external as just a backup device or for OSX (works best with firewire.)
I am not looking to boot XP although that would be nice, but simply to create a backup on the drive. I use Norton Ghost, which does allow a boot, or sorts, into the backup in order to restore a system.
But more, I was interested in an NTSF partition for Vista on this MBP. I have not used Vista's built-in backup program so I don't know how it works, but my thoughts were to partition the 500GB into multiple partitions and use them for XP, Leopard and Vista and a CCC clone of my two Leopard OSs.
Say, 3 HFS partitions for clones and storage, 1 FAT32 for XP and 1 NTFS for Vista, making 5 in all.
The 2 HFS partitions are probably easy. It was the other two, FAT32 and NTFS that I was concerned with.
I guess I will plug it in and use DU and see what happens. I have never used DU for NTFS or FAT32 on an external drive.
As long as the drive is empty, I have nothing to lose and lots of experience to gain, right?

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