Having troubles erasing my external HD?

IN response to some other problems I am having, it has been suggested that I erase the external 320 GB HD that I have connected to my iMac, which I use for TM backups...and start from scratch. I used the Disk Utility and did ERASE and zero'd out all data. However, it still shows on my drive that 132 MB are used? I am confused. Is there any other way to completely erase the drive so that it is like I am starting out with a new drive???
Any help would be appreciated. I know this may seem stupid, but I struggled with this all day yesterday. It took 3 hours to perform my erase function and I STILL have that on there.

Great! thank you for the quick response! I just checked and my partition scheme is GUID, so I guess that is good? I never partitioned it and didn't want it partitioned? It's not, is it?
OH, you are probably laughing at these questions...I promise I"m not really this stupid!

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That would explain your problem! If you have a backup then see if it's on your backup. Otherwise, you will need to restore it from your installer DVD using Pacifist:
How Restore Deleted or Missing OS X Components
A few of the basic OS X installed applications can be restored from the Optional Installs installer located in the Optional installs folder on your Installer DVD. However, if what you need is not there then follow the instructions below.
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defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles Yes Press RETURN.
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Here are Four Basic ways to use Pacifist (courtesy of George Orville.)
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B. Click on “Open Package ....” and navigate to package desired and click “Open” in the open/save window.....proceed to step 7.
C. Insert Mac OS X installer CD and when it mounts, navigate to .... Menu->Go->Go to Folder. In the path field enter or paste ....
/Volumes/disc name/System/Installation/Packages (where disc name is the name of the CD/DVD that you inserted.
• Click on the "Go" button ..... • Drag a .pkg to Pacifist..... proceed to step 7.
The package you'll need will have to be discovered by trial and error, but for most applications you should start with the Essentials.pkg and/or Additional Essentials.pkg.
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3. In the list that comes back, click the top most entry for the item that you want. ..... that is the one for the English language.
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6. Click “close”. Go to step 7.
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Pacifist will begin to extract files.
12. In steps 8/10ß.... you also have the choice to “cancel”
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I have just obtained a new 500 Gigabyte hard drive to replace my iMac's G5 160 Gigabyte internal drive. Alas, when I started to take apart the computer, I realized that mine (late 2005 iSight model) is the only one of the G5 iMacs that is so complicated to dismantle that I could not do it myself. Cleverly (of course) I sent off for an external enclosure for the drive so I could at least have its backup (and startup) capacity. God forbid I should pay someone an unreasonable amount of money to install it for me.
Following suggestions here (in these forums) and elsewhere, I elected to use Data Backup, which came with another external drive I previously purchased, in order to clone my onboard hard drive. I followed the instructions, and (many hours later -- during which I largely was asleep) the cloning process completed.
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Message was edited by: Leonard B.

Hi, BDAqua,
Nice to hear from you. You helped me with another recent question. Thank you.
The external case is Other World Computing's Mercury Elite Pro with Oxford chip set. Drive is an Hitachi deskstar 500 Gigabyte disk (I'll dig around for exact specs, if needed).
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<Edited by Host>

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Daimajin1 wrote:
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