Disk Utility hangs while partitioning

Hello,
I am trying to partition an external USB 2 drive for use with Time Machine. I connect the drive, see it recognized, then open Disk Utility and go into the Partition tab where I select GUID as the partition scheme and 1 partition. This is on an Intel Macbook running 10.5.2. When I apply and start the process the status changes to "Creating partition map" and after a few minutes the activity monitor reports Disk Utility as not responding. I have tried this 6 times, and let it run as long as 4 hours - nothing changes. I have restarted, disconnected/reconnected, reformatted the drive using Windows XP and tried again, no luck. I have also tried using APM instead of GUID, same problem. The external drive is one I have used with this macbook for a year with no issues. Does anyone have a suggestion for what could be causing this, or how to resolve it?
Thanks!
Rob

Ckeck iDefrag, i bought it last month and solved me lots of problems similars to yours.
Try using iDefrag in quick (online) mode. If it doesn't makes a difference. Use the bootable Coriolis CDMaker provided with the software.
Good luck!

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