I've used Maxtors' "Powermax" HDD utility to "LLF" all different brands of HDDs. It's faster tham the IBM utility and it's doing the same thing (writing "zeros").Get it
here. Read the text notes on that page. What you need to use is called "Write Disk Pack (low level format)". As per the instructions on the page, you will have to boot using a regular Win98 boot disk to run this. Follow the directions and you'll be OK.
You can also do this in Windows since you're working on a drive other than your boot drive. Norton has something in their Utilities Suite called "Wipe Info" that does zero fills. I use a utility called "
BCwipe". It also overwrites using zeros and works fine on XP.
These Windows-based wiping utilities at least give you the option of using your computer while you're formatting your drive.