How do I format my new secondary HDD in windows XP?

[Nealoc187]

I've installed my new secondary hard drive as a slave on the primary IDE. It is showing up in my device manager as being there. I know I need to now format it to make it usable. I am googling everything under the sun that I can think of to find a tutorial and yet every single thing I come up with is for Windows 98/ME and it says to make a bootable floppy, etc. Is there a way I can format my new HDD (secondary, my primary C: drive is going to remain installed)?

[Clay-fasa]

Go into start menu, right click on 'My Computer', and click on 'manage':

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/4218/menuxv7.jpg


When the Computer Management window opens, click on 'Disk Management' under the Storage section. Right click on the desired
drive, and in the menu select format:

http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/5800/managementnu8.jpg


Just make sure (double, triple, and quadruple check) you choose format on the right drive!!!

[Nealoc187]

I think I just figured it out thanks to your help. I hadn't partitioned it yet... it was showing up as 'unallocated' and thus the format option wouldn't show up (I'd be dicking around in the disk management window for some time now). Now that I created the partition it gave me the format option.

[Clay-fasa]

Glad I could be of assistance :)