Need help making external hard drive

[ClaudiaO.]

I have a PowerBook G4 and recently acquired the hard drive from an old Mac computer (tower). I want to take the old hard drive and use it as an external hard drive for my PowerBook.

I got myself an external drive case and have it all set up and attached to my PowerBook. I erased the contents of the old hard drive and now want to get it ready (format it and partition it, etc) to use.

When I go into Disk Utilities, partitioning is not an option like my mac HELP keeps telling me. What am I doing wrong? Please help! What do I need to do in order to make this a functioning external hard drive? My computer is recognizing that its there, but I'm afraid to transfer any of my PowerBook stuff over to it for fear of loosing it if I don't do this right!

Can anyone please help? Thanks!

 

[Makosuke]

Assuming you want one partition on the drive, here's what should work:

1. Open Disk Utility.

2. Click on the drive itself in the left column (that is, the thing that says "[#]GB [drive model]", not the name of the specific partition indented under that).

3. Click the "Erase" tab.

4. Select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" as the format, type whatever name you want, and click the "Erase" button down at the bottom.

It should just work once it's done.

You can alternately, at step 3, use the Partition tab, set it to 1 (or more) partitions with the popup at right, give each a name and format, and select the correct partition map with the Options button (it explains what each is good for--Apple Partition Map to boot a PPC Mac, GUID to boot an Intel Mac, and MBR to use it with a Windows machine).

None of that is necessary if you just want one partition, though--the Erase tab is much easier.

 

[ClaudiaO.]

It worked!

Thanks so much for your help! It worked!!