Have bought an external hard drive for my Macbook - Help!!!!

[SoupKitchen]

With all this talk of lost photos through dying laptops, I have bought myself an external harddrive to allow me to back up with ease.
BUT
I cant work out how to load it in or transfer data to it

I have a Macbook
It is a Maxtor Basics External harddrive

The instrucions are very basic ie plug in switch on.
The only thing it says is Mac users should launch the Apple Disk Utility to reformat the drive.

WTF

Please I am very computer illiterate , please someone rescue me

[SoupKitchen]

I have now been trying to do this for over an hour
any ideas?

[alibubbles]

We tried to do this, and didnd't succeed. All I know is the 60GB hard drive we bought was not capable or fast enough for storing photos. Easier to use .mac, or mobileme as it is now.

[retiredgoth]

.....how new is your MacBook?

If it is less than a year old it should have the "Leopard" operating system which has an application called "Time Machine". This is designed to keep a constant running back-up of your machine. Just start the application and it will walk you through the process...

(just tried it for myself, it works!)

[retiredgoth]

....or if you have an iPod, that is in itself an "external disc" which keeps a record of your photos and music!

[SoupKitchen]

About 16 months old, I have looked for timemachine in apps, but can't find it.

[SoupKitchen]

no ipod

[EyeballsintheSky]

Or you could just look for Disc Utility (applications -> utilities) and run it to see if it will reformat the drive. I have an Iomega drive and it just appears on the desktop and I transfer to it the same way I do with any folder.

[retiredgoth]

....does another hard disc image appear on your desk top when you plug it in?

If so try dragging and dropping iPhoto into the disc icon...

If this fails I will post a message on the Apple Mac forum on the OU site. The Uber-Geeks there usually find an answer in minutes....

[SoupKitchen]

Right, It comes up in Finder just below Mac HD, But I don't seem to be able to access it.
Drag and drop did not work
How do I run it from utilities
I says Mac OS9 drivers not installed in utilities info

[SoupKitchen]

Thanks for your support and help BTW, I really appreciate it