Well, it's not all peaches and cream on the Mac all the time. I just got a new external HD for the machine, and started setting it up. It was recognized right away, but it was (of course) formatted into NTFS. I've never had a problem just reformatting to a native FS, so I unmounted the drive, pulled up Disk Utility, and got started.

Oops.

It turns out, there are issues with these drives and Leopard - I could not get it formatted. Google to the rescue though - a quick search pulled up a support page with an email query tool. After I sent that, I got some nice (not linkable - gah!) information - with some fairly complex sounding directions, but hey - they worked. Now all I have to do is get my data reorganized....

Since that data isn't easily linkable, let me throw it here so other people might be able to find it - this is what you do if you tried formatting the drive, and it's now in a mostly useless state. If you have a Mac running Tiger around, there's a simpler answer - prepare the drive on the that, then move it. Otherwise:

1. Open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
2. Select the external drive and click on the Partition tab
3. Click on the Current Volume Scheme drop-down menu and divide the drive into 2 (or more) partitions
4. Click Options. From the Partition Schemes provided, click on the GUID Partition Table radio button. Click OK.
5. Click Apply. The Partition Disk screen opens.
6. Click Partition. At this point, the volume dismounts from the desktop and the drive is partitioned and formatted into multiple drives with GUID Partition Table scheme.
   Note: When Volumes are created, Time Machine may open asking if you would like to use the volume for backups. Click Cancel to proceed.
7. When finished, select the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu and choose Quit Disk Utility (recommended)
8. Relaunch the Disk Utility, select the external drive
9. and click on the Partition tab
10. Click on the Current Volume Scheme drop-down menu and select One (1) partition.
11. Click Options. From the Partition Schemes provided, click on the Apple Partition Map radio button. Click OK. Select other options as desired (e.g., Volume Name, Install Mac OS 9 Drivers, etc.).
12. Click Apply. The Partition Disk screen opens.
13. Click Partition. At this point, the volume dismounts from the desktop and the drive is partitioned and formatted into multiple drives with Apple Partition Map scheme.
    Note: When Volumes are created, Time Machine may open asking if you would like to use the volume for backups. Click Cancel to proceed.
14. When finished, select the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu and choose Quit Disk Utility (recommended)

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