you didn't have to boot an install CD, IIRC, you do it in disk management in windows, you have to reformat the entire drive, including, I believe, the label, so you have to partition it first. (assuming you aren't trying this on really super-old versions of windows.)

If it has an EFI (GPT) label, modern versions of windows should recognize it, but the article suggests that macs might use a hidden partition which you'd want to delete. I'd just wipe the entire thing and create a new label first. I'm guessing you just want one partition on it. IIRC, you can do all that in disk management, once it's done there, windows should see it.

IIRC you still use ancient versions of windows .. is that why you couldn't do this? Don't format it with an EFI label if you want to use an ancient version of windows or a really old computer that doesn't understand EFI labels. In that case you need the old MBR label, which is somewhat limited these days, at least for disk and partition size, number of partitions on a disk and which partitions can be used for booting if the disk is too big. (2TB I think, wow, this is ancient history these days.)

Here's an article that mentions the disk management tool, but also has some extraneous info for you about backing it up first. http://www.howtogeek.com/195530/how-...windows-drive/

Quick format would have been fine, it just lays out the new filesystem on the partition you are formatting. All the other blocks are unused and free or spare, and their data is unused. They will get overwrittten when they get allocated.

Older hw with BIOS probably won't recognize a GPT label. UEFI firmware will recognize it. That's probably why in your case MBR makes sense if the drive fits within it and you want to use it as a boot drive. Windows will recognize GPT on older computers if it's not a boot drive I believe. Not sure which version though.

-David