Quote Originally Posted by metavoid
Its the only hd in the system so I
expect it to be named hda.
Sorry but that means nothing. This isn't wimpdows! The name of the drive is dependent on its location on the bus.

primary master - /dev/hda
primary slave - /dev/hdb
secondary master - /dev/hdc
secondary slave - /dev/hdd

You could find it like so:
dmesg|grep hd

Should I try mkfs on the entire disk or what tool to use?

Thx
No use cfdisk. Make partitions first then format them however you like.