Formatting A Hard Drive, To format or not? Options

[Foxyphil]

Emac G4 . 1.25 Ghz. 770 ram. 80Gb hard drive. Focusrite saffire with bundled cubase le.

Ive concluded that I cant record many tracks with this set up - which amazes me but anyways - I am going to get an external hard drive (300gb).

My question, to anyone kind enough to give feedback, is this. Should I have the hard disk formatted to osX? The company will do this for free, possibly partition the disk as well. I know nothing about this stuff, but recall reading on site that it s best NOT to format the drive.

If possible, I want to use BFD drums, and waves plug ins. Im happy to commit stuff to audio. "Running 12 instances" of anything seems impossible anyway. But should I get this drive formatted (mac is running Panther), or hold fire on that?

Once again any feedback greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Phil

[lancet]

Any hard drive you get can easily be formatted with Disk Utility which is in your Utilities folder. The whole process takes literally less than 20 seconds.

Although I see little use for it these days, partitioning is just as easy and is also done with Disk Utility.

I'd probably format it myself. I've had issues in the past and just feel better if I format it myself when I get it.