format Mac HD in XP

[fatjess]

I have acquired a Lacie 500GB USB external HD. Apparently this was previously used on a mac, I do not have a mac & am hoping to use with XP. The drive is detected by windows, however, does not appear in my compter. I have attempted to use the disk management tool, where the disk is visible shown as online & healthy, however all options relating to the disk (format, delete partition etc) are greyed out. What can I do in XP to overcome this issue?

[Salazaar]

I dunno if you can in XP but Gparted should work...

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

Just burn the Live version to a CD/DVD and boot from that.

[fatjess]

I'va managed to resolve the initial problem & then used the disk management to initialise the disk, have then set up the primary partition, assigned a drive letter and run a quick format. The drive now shows in my computer etc. & appears fully usable. However, after shutting down windows, on restart the drive is no longer visable & I have to run the initialise disk & set up partition wizards again to show the disk. Obviously this is no use if I wish to store anything on the disk. Any suggestions (byw it's a Lacie Bigdisk extreme 500Gb if that makes any difference)