Reformatting An External Hard Drive

ok..noob alert

i have the old hard dive out of my hp...it's been wiped. to reformat, i went to disk utilities > 7 pass > fat 32

right or wrong?

if wrong, please show a brother some help!;D

How are you connecting it to the Mac, and what purpose do you intend to use it for?

through a 3.5 external hard drive case....firewire 400 w/800 adapter, just to move pics, etc over to it in case of hard drive failure...just storage

edit - it keeps asking do i want to back it up w/time machine -y or n?

The FAT-32 file system is limited to a maximum file size of around 4 GB. That means if you have large (greater than 4 GB) video files (movies, etc) to store on the drive, you will be unable to do so.

A better file format for the drive if it is to only be used with your Mac, is HFS Extended Journaled. In order to use any external drive for Time Machine backups, it must be formatted using HFS Extended Journaled.

Regards.

thanks!