About 18 months ago I purchased an external usb 1TB hard drive, which I wanted to use as back-up to my Foxsat HDR.
I formatted the drive to Ex3. I have now bought and installed a 1TB Hard Drive for the Foxsat. I have successfully transferred all the films and programs from the Ex Hard Drive back onto the new 1TB hard drive. Now I would like to use the external USB Hard drive as a back-up for my computer, so I need to format the drive back to NTFS. What is the safest way to do the conversion? I have read some dire warnings about what I would like to do, like destroying the hard drive if it isn't done properly. I would welcome your advice please.

Try Easeus Partition Manager

http://www.partition-tool.com/download.htm

You can just do a normal format in Windows.

Do not do a quick format.

With a full format the system does not use any information recorded on the drive so it's no more likely to damage it than a format of a brand new one.

Thanks grahamlthompson and Jepson for the replies.

@ grahamlthompson
I have downloaded Easeus Partition Manager and will try it later.

@Jepson
Windows, either WinXP or Win7 will not recognise the hard drive. It just doesn't show in My Computer.

You need to install EXT2FS to read the drive under windows.

Use Easeus partition manager to delete all the partitions on the drive. You can use Windows using Control Panel/ Administrative Tools/ Computer Management.

It's easier using Easeus though.

Even harder and more dangerous is using FDISK from the command line.

@ grahamlthompson

Thanks, Easeus did the job