External hard drive reformat

Question

I purchased an external hard drive ( a Seagate 2 TB Expansion Desktop Drive) and was told by the MAC rep in the store to perform the following simple task to reformat the disk so I could drag and drop files from my iMAC and store them on the external hard drive:
1. Go to Disk Utility
2. Choose the External Hard Drive
3. Select Erase
4. Select MAC OS Extended (Journaled)
5. Click on Erase button
Unfortunately when I do this, I get the following error:
Disk erase Failed with Error: File system formatter failed
I have Mac OS X (10.5.8) ... what am I missing here ?
Is there something wrong with my system ?

Answer 1

Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.