Partitioning an External Drive

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.gateway2000 (More info?)

I'm setting up a Maxtor 250GB external drive to restore the hard drive on several
of my computers in case any of the drives fail.

I have two questions:

1. I want to set up multiple partitions on the Maxtor drive. In Win XP, under
Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Disk Management, it looks like the first
step is to delete the 250GB partition on the external drive. After I do that,
will it then show me the option of setting up multiple partitions and will I be
able to do some in NTFS and others in FAT32 (for my Win98 machines)?

2. I'm debating between using Maxtor's included Dantz Retrospect software to
completely restore a failed drive...or...use Acronis 8.0, which I purchased some
time ago for this purpose. Any thoughts on which is the most reliable way to
go?

Thanks!
Scott