Quick format vs full format

It turns out that using the /q switch on Windows was the culprit: it enables 'quick format', i.e. the formatting process continues in background with every write made to the disk. Once it finishes, the drive is handled by Linux just fine.

Operating system is irrelevant here as it will need to be done at boot or outside from it, if you are talking about formatting the main hard drive.

I would recommend Darik's Boot and Nuke and use it on a USB drive, simply plop it in a machine and start, then move on to the next.

Alternatively, if you don't mind a bit of setup and these machines are networked, you can look at deploying Boot and Nuke to a PXE server and use TFTPD32 on Windows or any PXE server on Linux then you will be able to launch Dban across the network - just be careful that this is separated or other machines are not able to boot from it!