Disk Utility won't format/partition external HD

I was just using this HD earlier tonight because it had a VMware image on it that I use. (Drive previously formatted under Tiger's disk utility) Well, I decided I wanted to repartition it so I could have a LeopardInstallDVD partition and a partition for my VMware images. When I tried to repartition the HD in Disk Utility, it just kinda froze and I just got the spinning beach ball, so I had to Force Quit. I tried it again; same result. I tried to restart the computer, but it froze, so I had to hard boot it. Upon restart, I was greeted with a message that one of the disks was not recognized by the OS. Guess which one? Yep, not only did it no longer show up in Disk Utility, but now the other external drive I was using for my Time Machine backups was no longer showing either. I turned off that hard drive and turned it back on and luckily it mounted and all my backups seem to be intact. However, I still couldn't get the other one to show up. So, I unhooked it and attached it to a windows machine and it showed up as "uninitialized disk". I was able to initialize it and reformat it as NTFS. I then unhooked it, plugged it back into my Mac and it recognized it as a NTFS drive with one volume called "new volume." I again tried to partition it and all I get is the spinning beach ball and I have to force quit. I can't even do an "erase" on the drive; I just get the spinning beach ball. What is going on here? Did Leopard corrupt my drive somehow?
Edit: I just hooked up the drive to my windows machine AGAIN and formatted it as NTFS and I copied some files to it to make sure it works. Then I hooked it back to my Mac and it recognized the drive and one volume called "new volume" and it automatically mounted. I can see the files that I copied to the drive. The drive still works, but apparently only under Windows now. Why can't I partition the drive with disk utility?

Well, since it's an 80GB drive, XP wouldn't let me format it as anything other than NTFS, so I had to create smaller partitions in order to use Fat32. I created a 10GB fat32 and a 30GB fat32 and left the rest unallocated. I connected it back to my mac and it recognized both partitions in disk utility and it let me erase the 10 GB and format it as HFS+. However, I wanted to make it a GUID partition and I don't know how to do this besides repartitioning the disk. I clicked on the hard drive itself, clicked partition, created 1 partition to test (using the whole 76GB), and all I get is the spinning beach ball. I don't get it.

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bobwild wrote:
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Disk Utility can't format !

Hello,
Since Leopard, Disk Utility can't format external HD (or USB key or anything else). There is an error and the HD can't mount anymore.
If I use a Mac under Tiger, there is no problem to format ans the HD is usable under 10.5.x.
This problem isn't fix in 10.5.0, 10.5.1 or 10.5.2.
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Thanks

To dechamp :
HD is connected with a FW hub. maybe it is the problem :/
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Thanks !

Disk Utility and Time machine partition

Ran a Disk Utility check on my Time Machine volume (internal drive - and yes I stopped Time Machine first).
It Came back with error messages something like this:
Verifying volume “Leopard_2”
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Incorrect number of file hard links
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking multi-linked directories.
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998962)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998964)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998966)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998970)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998972)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998974)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998976)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998978)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998980)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998982)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998986)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998988)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
{ Edited for Brevity }
Stopped by user
Well, the first time I Used repair mode and it wrecked my backup. I had to reformat the partition. Even disk warrior couldn't undo the directory damage Leopard's disk utility reeked on my partition. The irony of it is, I doubt very seriously that anything was wrong with the backup partition before Disk Utility assaulted it.
I ran time machine again and checked (verified this time) the partition after it completed and Leopard's DU reported the same errors as before.
Then I checked the backup partition with Tiger's DU:
Verifying volume “Leopard_2”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Leopard_2 appears to be OK.
Mounting Disk
1 HFS volume checked
Volume passed verification
Tiger found no problems.
I also checked the partition with Disk Warrior and got a good report.
If I'm not the only one that has this problem then it looks like Leopards DU is an accident waiting to happen when someone uses it to "repair" their Time Machine partition.
Has anyone else experienced this?

FYI, I have a TM partition sharing an internal HD with a FAT32 formatted partition. Here's my Verify output. I did not stop TM while running Verify
Verifying volume “MacTimeMachine”
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking multi-linked directories.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume MacTimeMachine appears to be OK.

Disk Utility won't format/partition external HD

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