External Hard drive problem

[Twill]

I am trying to instal a new external hard drive. (Excelstor J88) Connected via USB 2.0 When it didn't work (I'll explain more later) I connected it to my laptop (Windows 2000), installed it and formatted the disc in NTFS. Put some files on it, no problem.
Then I hooked it back up to my desktop. (Windows XP) XP recognises it and displays it as drive F. I click on it and it tells me that the disc is not formatted, do I want to format. I click yes but after a while it comes back with "Windows is unable to format".
So I go to computer->manage->disk management. It sees the drive and shows it as healthy, but not formatted.
If I hook it back up to my laptop then all works fine.

Help!

[Twill]

Well seeing as no one has answered my posting, I may as well do it myself!!
Eventually I partitioned the drive and formatted part of it FAT32, and it works fine. I'd prefer NTFS, but at least now I have a drive which works.

I'm still open to any suggestions......