Help on reformatting an external HD

I currently have an external Hard Drive (Mybook 500GB) and I cannot figure out for the life of me how to reformat it so that I can use it for Time Machine. Please if someone could give me a quick step by step on how to reformat an external I would be at your mercy. This has taken up to much of my day for me to worry about it anymore and i figured i would ask the experts (every other mac user but me lately...)
Thanks A LOT
J C M

Go into System Preferences > Time Machine and make sure that the large white button is in the On position. Connect your drive and Time Machine will ask you to format your drive. Allow Time Machine to do so.
Many people have found that it takes a bit of a partition two-step to get a drive formatted correctly if you prefer to do it yourself rather than allow Time Machine to automatically do the formatting. There are good directions here. However, people with PPC Macs should substitute Apple Partition Map for GUID.

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