I know a little bit about Windows computers (maybe about 10% of what you guys on this bbs know) but when it comes to Apple I know less than nothing. Really less than nothing because I keep expecting it to do things like Windows would, and of course it doesn't, so to me the whole experience is counter-intuitive.

Anyway... After four years of very careless operation SWMBO has dragged her iMac into almost unusability, downloading each and anything that caught her eye, trying every free application that came along, never, ever deleting anything that found its way onto her hard drive. Up until this week, boot times were running over two minutes and internet access was sometimes so slow that it was unusable.

All that is changed now. I took it to the friendly computer store, told them to Nuke and Repave: Save the photos, then format the hard drive, install the latest OS the old iMac would support, install FireFox and Gmail, put in some version of Microsoft Office, and get her Time Machine working on the external FireWire hard drive.

Apparently all of that was successfully done (haven't actually turned it on and tried it out yet) except the Time Machine.

The external drive seems pretty versatile (FireWire, USB, and apparently eSATA connectors) but the computer shop was unable to get their computers or SWMBO's computer to "see" the drive, and I have had the same results with my Windows computer. Is this because the drive was originally formatted to run under Macintosh OS?

I have several suitably-sized 3.5" hard drives and an external USB dock for them. What do I need to do to make the iMac run Time Machine on that hardware?

tanstaafl.