Formating HDD b4 installing Fedora

[Braja Kishore Chattaraj]

I assembled a new PC to install Fedora 14. Boot order is USB, CD/DVD drive, and finally
HDD. When I plug the Fedora 14 CD I get the countdown screen with blue background and then
some gibberish text fills the screen. From what I can tell it is trying to write to the
HDD and failing. Tried a couple of other distro CDs / DVDs with same issue. The only
logical thing I can think of is to format the HDD. Can you suggest if there are any free
tools to format the disk. I am guessing it will install Fedora 14 when it has been
formatted. The HDD is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB. 
I am surprised the Fedora CD does not prompt me to format the HDD like Windows CDs usually
do. Any pointers towards a solution would help. 
Thanks,Braja