Hi njlippard,
Are you formatting these 250gb hard drives during a software platform installation? If given a choice between 'formatting' and 'formatting <Quick>,' it may take a significant amount of time if you do not choose <Quick>; it's a large drive.
Western Digital has their Data Lifeguard Tools, which works as a bootable CD or floppy. By booting with it, you can setup your new drive in DOS (you'll need this option if you don't have a platform yet). With their program you should be able to format a drive in a minute's time. Also, when a drive is brand new, it will usually appear in the Data Lifeguard Tools program as 'Blank.'
FYI: Writing zeros to a drive will make the disks "like new" again--with no traces of data ever being stored upon them. It won't, however, repair a damaged disk or fix a tired drive. If partitions are merely knocked down on a hard drive (deleting them, for example, with a '98 setup disk) and the disks are not formatted, the drive will show 'blank' as well; but the data will still remain.
You can download the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools from their site. If a quick format will work for you, you'll be able to clip along like there's no tomorrow.
There's others here that will know more, but I thought I would throw in my two cents.
Kemisco
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Blow the dust from your computer outside, it's mostly skin dust. A clean computer is a cool computer.