My experience has also been that restoring these back-ups (sometimes called tapes) is a big pain and doesn't always work. I think it usually also means that a catalogue with libraries of sorts is saved, not merely copies of the files that are the same as what you have on your computer. That is not quite the same as 'backing-up', which in my experience, means that the computer uses some kind of software to periodically back-up and supplement your files to the EHD. Most people here said that it's possible to write to the various OS's using different techniques.

The way I understand it is that the method you used to back-up your files is called 'writing'. Well, I'm no tech-head (I probably just made-up that word), but I happened to notice that no one responded to you. Have I not done this properly - it all works OK I plugged it in and dragged all my files onto it. wasn't keeping too close of an eye on it. Reads HFS+, allows read and write on both systems, no limit on transfer sizes. Re-Formatting the Iomega on Mac as HFS+ and then plugging into the PC worked great as the Seagate drive already required me to download their HFS Driver for Windows. I need to be able to use interchangeably between the Mac OSX and a Windows XP Pro. I've recently gone through two different external hard drives: first a seagate goflex pro 750 Gb for Mac and now a Iomega 3.0 1Tb NTFS Formatted. On a Mac, you first need to download NTFS drivers, see this article: If you are on Windows, the hard drive is most likely formatted with NTFS (not FAT32).

1tb external hard drive time machine