Need help with external drive USB 2.0

I bought a usb 2.0 external drive (160gb), I thought I could use it the same way as a 2Gb flash drive but that doesn't work that way.
It turns out that a large external drive need to be partitionned in order to use it and I don't have the instructions to do it, I am looking for some help on how to proceed (partitionning & formatting). Also, I's like to create 3 partitions, one for backing up the entire internal drive and 2 other partitions for backing up musics and movies files.
Thanks for any help...............

 

Yeah, Gboss. I would think you'd find your drive already formatted and ready to go. You can use My Computer>Manage>Disk Management to re-format and partition the drive (assuming WinXP).

Did your drive come with backup software? I use Acronis True Image 9.0 to backup to USB drives and it works great (though a little flakey with SATA).

Hey, I see you're from Brooklyn. I grew up in Westchester and am now in Albuquerque. Can you do me a big favor and send me some REAL pizza?

 

Generally externals come formatted as FAT32. If movie files are to be backed up, NTFS format could be more accommodating, depending on your size requirements. Check out this reference chart for file size / volume limitations. I assume you are running XP, if w98 or lower NTFS will not be available.