80gb FIrewire HDD with virus

[Bepunk]

As the topic states, I have a working Western Digital Firewire HDD, but it is infested. Is there any safe way to format the hard drive without infecting the system it is connected to?

I could -really- use this to back-up mp3s, documents, pictures, etc while I reformate 380gb of space.

[zandor]

It shouldn't do anything if you plug it in and format it, provided of course that windows doesn't do something stupid and autoplay the thing. Does autoplay work on HDs? I have no idea.
For the truely paranoid, boot Linux/BSD/etc. off a CD, then format.