NTFS to FAT32 using OS X?!

Hi, I've been given an internal HDD by a friend from his windows PC, I've plugged it in my G4 and it comes up on the desktop.

however i save anything on it, it says it cant be modified.

i read something about windows being NTFS and macs being FAT32, so how do i format it using my mac to become a FAT32 HDD?

You use Disk Utility to Erase the drive. Then you can choose to format it Fat32

thanks for the quick reply

everythings grey

the volume format (which i cant change) says MS-DOS file system

sory i was being stupid, i was clicking where its name was ive done it now thanks alot

moopoo32 said:

i read something about windows being NTFS and macs being FAT32, so how do i format it using my mac to become a FAT32 HDD?

Click to expand...

Just a point of clarification here. NTFS is the file system that Windows machines currently use, in versions past, FAT32 was more common. There are a number of disadvantages to FAT32, most notably the fact that you can not store files that are greater than or equal to 4GB in size. In addition, FAT32 does not support file-level security and it is more susceptible to fragmentation.

Mac OS X uses HFS+ natively, but can read/write to FAT32 partitions and read from NTFS (not write, which is why you were having difficulty). There are a number of different options for enabling NTFS read/write capability, the easiest of which is probably Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X.

You may be able to format that NTFS drive if you unmount it first (but keep it connected), the greyed out option should then go away

In addition to what cwa had to say, I'd like to point out that if you do use FAT32, especially on an external drive, you risk what happened to the guy in this thread:
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96232