Setting up an external drive for my iMac

[BDD888]

I'm planning on buying a Thermatake HD Dock/2TB HD. What I'd like to know is can I put a brand new HD into the dock, hook it up to my iMac, and have Mac OS X read the drive so I can format it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

I've read posts and seen video clips (Ask the Techies) that say that new hard drives do come formatted. Some FAT32 or NTFS. Others for the Mac. Yet, I've also read other posts where people claim no new drives come formatted. What is true today?

I've seen ads for HD say they are compatible with PC (I assumed it was formatted in NTFS). And others for both PC and Mac (FAT32). Is this correct? And other ads from the same website not mention anything about compatibility (is this one of those unformatted drives?).

 

[drgrafix]

FWIW... I recently bought a Fantom 2TB USB drive which I'm pretty sure comes pre-formatted FAT. I plugged it in and it was recognized, and then I reformatted it HFS Journaled in a matter of minutes. Drive is working like a charm (my second Fantom).

 

[BDD888]

Ok thanks Drgrafix. This is I'm finding is the general consensus. Don't know why there are still the odd person claiming new HD come unformatted still. I'll just get my 2TB HD and format it to the required MS OS Extended (Journaled) so I can use it with TM and iTunes.

 

[Sirolway]

I'd be inclined to format a brand new hard disk anyway, just to make sure it's done right & any bad sectors etc are spotted from the start.

Ditto SD cards etc - I always format them in the device that's going to use them & (I believe) am less likely to come to grief that way...