ITunes Library to External HD Problem

I am trying to take my iTunes library from my home Mac and put it on a new external HD so I can use my library at work on a PC. Disc utility shows the external HD formatted out of the box as MS-DOS.
1. For some reason, it is not allowing me to write to the HD ("...could not be moved because Untitled cannot be modified"). How do I overcome this?
2. What is the process to add the library to my PC once I have transferred to the external HD (not much PC experience here!)?

What is the process to add the library to my PC once I have transferred to the external HD (not much PC experience here!)?
If you're running iTunes 7, you can just drag the entire iTunes folder to your external hard drive. Then hold down the Option key while launching iTunes on the Mac. You'll be given a dialog box where you can select the iTunes library you want to use. Navigate to and select the iTunes folder on the hard drive. When you move the drive to your PC, do the same thing (though you hold down the Shift key on the PC).
As to your problem with writing to the drive, can you copy any file by dragging it via the Finder? If that also fails, then you'll probably want to take that issue up in the Mac OS X forum as Chris suggested.
Regards.

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