How do i format a external hard drive?

i got a external hard drive to use as a back out. but i have no idea how to format the external HD. what should i do? how?
thank u

connect the hard drive to the mac
run disk utility (found in the applications/utilities directory)
the drive should be displayed in the lefthand pane of the disk utility window, click on it to select it
click the 'partition' tab, it should show the current format and allow you to alter it if necessary, for mac use the "mac os extended (journalled)" format
once you've formatted and/or partitoned the drive it is a good idea to go to the 'erase' tab and use it to write zeros to the disk

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How do i format a external hard drive?

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