Help please - external HD problem

[kierend]

Today I received my brand new LaCie grand 1TB external hard drive. So I formatted it on my vista laptop and put stuff like my documents music and videos on it as I am getting a macbook pro next week.
I've gone to my mates who has an iMac this eve with my hard drive and realized as I formatted it on vista its in read only mode and i cannot edit it. I have put all the files i need on my mates leopard imac so I am happy to erase the hard drive and format it to mac. Although I have no idea how! Please can I have some help! I'm a bit of a mactard currently!
Any help appreciated,
Kieren

 

[spinnerlys]

MacRumors Guides - File Systems

Disk Utility guide

 

[kierend]

Thanks for your help but I cannot erase and reformat it its telling me that:


Volume Erase failed with the error:

Could not unmount disk.

I have discovered that it is an NTFS file though.
This is when I attempt to reformat it to mac os extended (journaled)

Any suggestions ?

 

[spinnerlys]

What if you go via the partition tab?

What if you eject the HDD and then re-connect it and try it again?

It seems something is accessing the HDD, which is why it can't unmount it.

 

[kierend]

Hmm attempting to do it now but using sero out data, hopefully this will work, taking ages to prepare to zero disk, is this normal? Thanks for your help

 

[spinnerlys]

Hmm attempting to do it now but using sero out data, hopefully this will work, taking ages to prepare to zero disk, is this normal? Thanks for your help

As the below image tells you (like Disk Utility told you too)

Zero Out overwrites your data with zeros, in your case it writes 1TB worth of zeros.

Depending on the interface you use, that will take up to eight hours.

Btw you didn't need to use the ZERO OUT option.

 

[kierend]

Sorted somehow corrupted it so it had to reformat?????