Odd HD problem

[Mo0o]

My dad recently gave me an old HD that he says only had 2 gigs in it. So I plug it in and it turned it there was 18 gigs on unpartitioned space. So im right now trying to install XP pro on it but it doesn't seem to want to format, its at 0% and it's be atleast 20 minutes. Right now I have it set to slave and the old partition was FAT if that makes any difference at all.

Edit:
I forgot to add that when i first plugged it in i COULD see the files it had and the computer had no problem recognizing it.

 

[Bozo Galora]

pop in a win98 boot disc and use fdisk in this case, before xp

type fdisk /mbr
twice at A>: (note space after fdisk)
then use fdisk to partition