coldDeath

Lich has pretty much summed it up.

If you prefer to do everything visually, or if you don't really know how to partition and format hard drives, i suggest you use PartitionMagic (I don't own that software) or Paragon Partition Manager (I used to use this all the time until i found that Linux liveCDs have tools for the job).

If you want to use a linux liveCD, you can can use fdisk to format and parition the harddrive, then use one of the numerous tools to give it a filesystem. For example, if you wanted to make it FAT32, you could use mkdosfs, or for somehtign liek ReiserFS you could use mkreiserfs.

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