Question re FCE and external HD

Hello all,

I am new to video editing and am set to start using Final Cut Express. I have a macbook running leopard with 2GB RAM and a 160 gig HD. I just got a maxtor one touch 500GB drive (the one with the firewire connection). Thing is, it was given to me by a friend of mine who used it for about a month with his windows desktop.

1) Can someone please tell me how I can reformat this to work optimally with my macbook?

2) Is there something I need to do before I begin writing huge video files to the drive? I thought I read somewhere that something needed to be done to allow for the recording of files larger than 4GB. Is this true?

Anything I can do that won't cost me any more money would be greatly preferred.

Thanks so much for your time and help!

You may have to format the external (wipe it clean using Disk Utility) and it should work fine.

I'd be more concerned with the Macbook having an integrated graphics card rather than a dedicated one - most Pro apps won't run well. Although FCE is not intensive as FCP or Motion, so performance might not take a hit. Food for thought.

I appreciate your feedback. I'm going to get a Pro sometime next year after the new ones come out and some of the early bugs are worked out. And by then, I'll want to get FCP as well. I don't think FCE express will give my macbook too many problems.