Formatting a new drive

["biscut" <biscut ntlworld com>]

Hi
I know I have asked this question before but I have lost the answer that
someone kindly gave me. 
I have a new 25GB drive that I want to put into my Redhat 6.1 box, I
have used the linux fdisk to set the drive size etc and on using df -hl
then it recognises the correct size etc. However, I cannot change the
permissions on any folders that I create, I seem to remember that this
is due to formatting of the drive? Can someone tell me what I need to do
or where I need to look for the answer please ?? I promise I will write
the answer down somewhere that I can find it next time *grin*

Thanks for your help and assistance

Regards
Davidt