Reformatting an external hard drive from mac to pc

i have a 320GB simple tech external hard drive that i used for my mac book pro. My mac book pro broke down completely so i bought an Asus laptop which runs Windows 7. I go to plug in the external hard drive, however i cant access it. It does show up under devices and printers but i cant open it in anyway. The only option i get is to eject it. is there any way that i can get it so that my new laptop can read it ?

i have the same issue, but when I right click on the partion, the option to assign a drive letter is grey'd out.  i do not see a disk format either, it is blank in that section (FileSystem).
What can I do?  i have Windows XP
Hey I had the exact same problem. I was using my external hard drive on a MacBook and wanted to format it so that it would work on XP but when I opened Disk Management all the options were greyed out. Here's how I solved the problem:
1. Connect your external hard drive to your mac
2. Open Disk Utility (command+F and type 'disk utility')
3. Click the drive you want to format in the left hand pannel
4. Click the 'partition' tab
5. Select under Volume Scheme '1 partition'
6. Under Volume Information, under format select 'MS- DOS (FAT)'
7. Click 'Apply'
The disk should now be formatted in FAT32 which is compatible with Windows XP. After completing those steps I connect the hard drive to my PC and I was able to read and write in the volume. Hope this helps!

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