How to format hard drives?

Hi all, i have about 10 hard drives that i want to format! but i don't know how to format them! i don't want to put an OS on them just format them for sale!

I have a floppy disk set up with MS DOS on it and when i restart the computer with a hard drive fitted i get the screen i want through the floppy disk! but i don't know the command prompt to format the hard drive?

and how is one to know the drive letter for the hard drive to be formatted?

 

it would probably be easier and safer to use the free gparted bootcd. It will boot up the computer and show you all your hard drives and there sizes in a nice colorful screen. From there you just right click on the hard drive you want to format and choose format. It's a very good free program. If you have more than one partition on the drive you might have to delete each partition and then format the entire empty drive.

http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/screenshots.php

There is also other programs that can be used to prep a hard drive that once held sensitive data, you might want to use the free "killdisk" to get a more secure erasure instead of a simple format but it will take longer.

http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

 

dos version is of windows xp and the drives are 3g or less

 

thanks!!! just setup as slave and formatted!

my goal was to try and format the hard drives without going through an operating system (just to learn how to do it) but i failed every time! oh well! its done now, thanks!!!