Help! Leopard can't reformat my new external hdd

[superspiffy]

So I bought a new 1TB Western Digital external hdd to use for Time Machine. I go about reformatting it to Mac OS Extended via Disk Utility but it keeps giving me the error:

Disk Erase failed with the error:
File system reformatter failed.

I try it over and over again after multiple reboots. The only thing that works is just FAT. The drive works fine under FAT, but I obviously need hfs for Time Machine. So I open up Time Machine and I choose the new drive. Time Machine then attempts to reformat it. Then it gives me the error:

The underlying task reported failure on exit.

I do this again and again with the same errors. I just can't reformat the drive to hfs. What am I doing wrong?

 

[admiraldennis]

Try repartioning the drive first.

In Disk utility:
-Select your actual drive (not the volume)
-Go to the partition tab
-Under "Volume Scheme", choose '1 Partition' (or whatever you want)
-Format accordingly

 

[superspiffy]

Ok everything is good now and here's the method I used:

Disk utility, Partition tab, select "1 Partition," click on Options, and select the "GUID... " option, and press OK.

There's probably something about Western Digital's master boot record that conflicts with OS X.

 

[dlmart2]

I have the same drive and had the same problem... it took me a while to figure it out but finally got it working after being frustrated. lol

Ok everything is good now and here's the method I used:

Disk utility, Partition tab, select "1 Partition," click on Options, and select the "GUID... " option, and press OK.

There's probably something about Western Digital's master boot record that conflicts with OS X.