How do I prepare my USB harddrive for Mac

I have an 80 Gb hard drive that was in a Windows XP machine and have just stuck it in a new external USB-2 case and want to know what I should do to prepare it for using with my MacMini. I would like to reformat it for the Mac. Right now it is full of windows files. Should I reformat it on my XP machine first to clear the data before trying to set it up on the Mac? I am using OSX 10.4.4.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I bought an external LaCie firewire drive, and although it didn't have files on it, it was FAT32 formatted. I used the below page as a guide, and did everything using OS X's Disc Utility:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html

Mark

Thanks

Thanks for that information. I'll read up on it before doing any reformatting etc.

Well it you want to set it up as though it is a mac drive, follow that link. Other wise I use my windows extrenal drive on my mac all the time and it never questions it.