Connecting an external hard drive

Hello,
This is probably a ridiculously simple question, but a bit new to the modern Mac.
I have a new external hard drive, connected via a firewire cable. I get the message like 'disc not recognised' and it prompts initialize, ignore or eject. Clicking Initalise takes me to disk utility - but where do i go from here?
I can see no 'initalise' option. Do I need to erase the disk first? Do I need to download a driver? The instructions that came with the external disc are in another language, and I am confused!
Thanks for any help!

Presumably the disk is formatted with a partitioning scheme or file system type not known by the Mac. Where was this drive used previously? On a Windows system? A Linux or other Unix system?
Probably the partitioning is acceptable and most likely the file system is not one of those known to Mac OS:
• Apple HFS and HFS+ (with or without journalling)
• Microsoft FAT (read/write)
• Microsoft NTFS (read-only)
• Unix (which format, I don’t know, offhand)
To reformat the volume in Disk Utility, select its icon on the left then select the “Erase” tab on the right. Choose the file system format you want to use (Mac HFS+ is preferable for Macintosh-only use. FAT is best for file exchange with Windows systems). and click the “Erase” button at the bottom center of the screen.
If you want to be able to boot from this disk, then you’re probably going to have to repartition it first and you must use the GUID Partition Table style of partitioning. To do this, select the device on the left and the “Partition” tab on the right followed by the “Options…” button below. Now select the “GUID Partition Table” radio button and confirm. Now click the “Partition” button on the lower right.
Randall Schulz

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