I had to replace my defective hard drive. I installed one that had
been wiped clean by the previous user. As a result, when I attempted
to use my HP Recovery CD, it produced the C: prompt but indicated that
it was unable to detect a hard drive. I assume that means that the
hard drive has to be formatted because when I checked the bios startup
both the Primary and Secondary Slaves said "None." Does that mean that
I have to Format the drive before the drive is recognized?

Also, is there any way around the use of a boot up floppy?
Unfortunately, I do not have one, and my second computer does not have
a floppy drive.