Migrating files to a new laptop

[TriggerHappy]

I've just bought a new Macbook Pro (not yet arrived) to replace my ageing laptop PC. Along with this I've purchased a 1TB hard-drive to migrate many of my current files over to the Mac and also to back-up the Mac in future. Having never had an external hard drive I'm not really sure what I'm doing, especially surrounding any compatibility conflicts I may encounter going from PC to Mac so have a couple of questions for you all.

Firstly, let me explain my plan:
I want to partition the external hard drive into 3 sections. The first will be 100GB in size to accommodate everything on my current laptop. The second will be 500GB which is the size of the hard drive in the Mac to be used for backing up my files and then the remainder will serve to store files held on neither computer.

This leads me to the questions I have:
1) Is the above plan feasible?
2) How do I partition a hard drive and does it require any extra software?
3) Am I right in thinking that partitioning can't be altered on the hard drive without losing the data already present?
4) Are there any cross-compatibility issues I need to be aware of when migrating my files over? Obviously some files can't be run on a Mac and vice-versa but I mean more along the lines of will a partition be readable and accessable by both systems so I can get to my photo's, video's and other files.

As I said, this is something I've never done before so feel free to treat me like a complete idiot (no difference there then )!

Thanks!

 

[Craikeybaby]

Yes, that does sound feasible. I would use disk utility on the Mac to format the disk. To keep all the partitions cross platform compatible, I'd suggest formatting in the FAT32 format.

I'd also be tempted to make the back up section a bit bigger than your HD, so that you can have a bit of history stored too.

 

[JasonRS]

1) Is the above plan feasible?

Yes

2) How do I partition a hard drive and does it require any extra software?

Disk Utility on the Mac or Disk Manager in Windows

3) Am I right in thinking that partitioning can't be altered on the hard drive without losing the data already present?
Sort of, you need 3rd party tools to do this.

4) Are there any cross-compatibility issues I need to be aware of when migrating my files over? Obviously some files can't be run on a Mac and vice-versa but I mean more along the lines of will a partition be readable and accessable by both systems so I can get to my photo's, video's and other files.

Windows can't read Mac formatted partitions (HFS), and OS X can't write to NTFS partitions. There's 3rd party software to get around this btw.

To write NTFS on the Mac, get

http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/

For backing up the Mac, bear in mind you have Time Machine, which can be setup to use and external drive, and will initiate a backup when you plug the drive in. TM will format the partition for you.

If I were you, I'd

1. Format USB drive initially as NTFS
2. Copy everything off old laptop onto USB drive
3. Copy all that onto the MBP
4. Redo the USB drive as 2 Partitions, one for data, one for Backup using Mac Journalled for formatting.
5. Forget about the old laptop in the windows world.
6. Use Time Machine for backup.