Problems creating a disk image on an external hard drive

Hiya,
I've been trying to create a disk image on my dad's external hard drive to hold my back-ups all day with no luck. I've managed small ones, e.g. a few MB, but when trying to create images 20 or 40 GB in size (which is what I need), it isn't working.
When I've tried creating them in Disk Utility with the place to save them to as the external HD, it says "Unable to create... Illegal seek" which doesn't explain much to me! I have been successful in creating a large disk image on my own HD, but when I try to move it to the external HD, it says "Sorry the operation could not be completed because an unexpected error occured (Error code -1309)."
Extra info:
- I am saving my back-ups in a disk image, as they must be password protected, so that's why I'm not just copying them over.
- There's plenty of space avaliable on the external HD, so it would seem that isn't the problem.
- The HD is a Freecom Classic SL, connected via USB cable.
Any ideas anyone?
Thanks alot,
Charity

Found the answer. It was formatted for Windows.

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