Formatting a disk before installation

["sting sting" <qwejohn hotmail com>]

Hello,
I want to format a disk *before* installing RH9 on it;

The reason is that I want to format it before installing (and not use the 
format mechanism
of the RH9 installer ) is , that I want to keep space free for Windows ;
I did try to install and format using linux installer (and keep free space 
for windows)
; after I done so, there  was a problem : I could not
boot from disk; I suspect this is so because , originally, windows was 
installed
(and  the boot sector was held by windows);
and because  did not format the disk totally, I have problems.

what is the way to do this ? is there  a Linux utility for formatting a disk 
?

regards,
sting

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