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Plug in the external drive to the firewire or USB 2 port and turn it on.

Right Click on “My Computer”

Then click on Manage

If the following wizard opens

Click on cancel. If the disk says Not Initialized then right click on the drive and initialize it by clicking on Initialize Disk.  Click OK at the next menu to complete the process.

The next step is to format.  Right click the drive in the stripped area and click New Partition

Click Next at the Convert Disk Wizard

7. Select the Primary partition and click Next

8.  Specify Partition Size to the default which is the capacity of the drive and click Next


9. Assign a drive letter or choose the default then click Next

10.  Select Format the partition with the following settings

USE NTFS

NAME THE DRIVE UNDER VOLUME LABEL

Make sure that Perform a quick format is unchecked then click Next.
11. Click Finish to start the formatting process.  Process will take @ 1.25 hours for 200 gigs (for example)

How to format a hard drive in Mac OSX

Must be logged on as a user with administrator privileges

1. Launch Disk Utility.  Go to Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility

2. The external hard drive will be listed in the left hand column select the drive to format

3. Select Erase from the tabbed selections.  Choose the Volume Format: as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

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