formatting question

hey, there is a large file on my mac i need to bring to work and a buddy lent me his external hard drive but it has been wiped clean. how do i format this so i can drag and drop a file on it? it keeps giving me "this drive can not be changed" or something close to that when i try to drag and drop a file on to it.

thanks in advance!

Connect it to your Mac and use Disc Utility to reformat it. He won't be able to read it on a PC though.

ha ha. sucks to be the buddy at work with a PC!
you could use a PC to reformat the drive as FAT32.
In that case, your Mac could write the file, and the PC can read it.

yeah, i hate my pc's at work. i am the odd ball who likes macs here too. so whats the best idea to get a 1.37 gb file to my work pc from my mac at home?

Here are the steps I would use to repartition your drive

1)Make sure the drive is plugged in
2)Open up DiskUtil (Applications -> Utilities)
3)Select the drive and click the 'partition' tab
4)Under the label 'Partition Scheme' there should be a 'drop down menu' - select 1 partition
5)Under the label 'volume information' - 1. choose a name. 2. select a file system (I would use 'MS-DOS(FAT)' -which is FAT32- this will allow both macs and pc's to read/write to the drive) 3. the size should automatically be set to the size of the drive
6)Click 'Partition' and DiskUtil should start partitiong the drive

Once its done partitioning, The drive should be ready to use
Hope this helps!

thanks for the advice, i will try it tonight when i get home!

hey, it worked perfect!!!!!! thanks guys for the help.

excellent instructions.