Mac Users - Formatting an NTFS external drive to write with OS X?

How would I go about properly formatting my external Seagate NTFS drive so I can write to it on my Mac? I've been fiddling around, and it looks like I can do it though disk utility, though I've never done this before and don't want to mess anything up. Any help would be really appreciated.

just partition it and format it hpfs in disk utility.

I don't see hpfs under the format options, so would I just have to partition it in MD-DOS (FAT) then?

Clarify your question.

Do you want to be able to write to an NTFS volume on your Mac?

or

Do you want to completely format/wipe your drive so you can use it on your Mac?

If the first, get MacFuse from Google and the and the NTFS-3G fuse driver. This will allow read/write to an NTFS volume. I/O is not very good, but it works.

If the second, you can use /Applications/Utilitie​s/Disk Utility. Select the physical drive, Erase, then you should be able select the resulting filesystem type. There are several options, but Extended (Journaled) is the standard in the current OS X version (since 10.4).