[Alug]USB Hard Drives

Dear ALUG, I am looking to buying a USB hard drive and wondering if anyone knows anything about using them with Linux. Presumably I would have to set up a new block device connected to one of the USB ports. I could then mount it at somewhere like /mnt/usbhd. The ones I've looked at say that you have to write your own partition table and format the partitions yourself; how would I do this? (The details of the one I'm thinking of are here: http://www.dabs.com/products/prod-info3-info.asp?&m=y&quicklinx=2BDV.) Cheers in advance. Richard