What's the best way to safely backup two laptops?

I’ve got an external HD to backup my laptop. At 60GB, it’s big enough to make an image copy. However I also want to backup my BF’s Mac: just his important files. Any recommendations or issues with using one HD for this?

Which is the best software to use for the job?

The HD is in NTFS format, and I could use the backup utility in XP or Nero BackItUp for the PC laptop. I’m a Mac-idiot, so which utility should I use on the Mac?

Thanks.

there’s a hardware to do this from seagate. It’s called one touch backup featured on taipei times a while ago. should give that a try…

ax

IIRC, the Mac should have a backup utility. Just look under Applications/Utilities. (Or was it /Tools?) However, the Mac will probably not like NTFS, so you should split the harddisk space into two partitions.

Thanks. I should make the Mac partition using the Mac I guess?

I guess beside Partition Magic there should (at least in the Windows world) hardly be any software on the PC to support HPFS, so yes, the best bet is to use the Mac for formatting the second partition. (after the disk was partitioned - which you can do on the PC)

So in short: create two partitions, format them separately (PC/Mac) and there you go…