How do you format a hard drive with ubuntu?

Linux

The question is slightly ambiguous.

A hard drive is a physical device which reads and writes blocks of data. The drive itself can not be a Linux hard drive, or a Windows hard drive, it simply deals in blocks.

The file system on the hard drive however can be created by several operating systems; Linux, Windows, Mac OSX as well as many others. The file systems are mostly incompatible between operating systems.

For example.

Windows can read and write NTFS but in general not ext3fs.

Linux can read and write ext3fs but in general not NTFS.

Any drive formatted for one file system can be re-formatted to another file system by any operating system which supports the drive hardware. So to re-format a Linux (e.g. ext3fs) formatted drive, simply treat it as a blank drive and follow the Windows instructions for formatting a drive. It's important to note that when you re-format a drive, any data on it is overwritten and lost.

If you want to know how to format an ext3fs (Linux file system) on a drive while using Windows. The short answer is you can't. In general operating systems are unable to format drives for non native file systems. Even when drivers are available so it can be read and written to, it's generally still not possible to format the drive.

that is:

Windows cannot format a drive with a Linux file system (e.g. ext3)

Linux cannot format a drive with a Windows file system (e.g. ntfs)

If you simply want to share files between a Linux and Windows system though, there are some file systems which both operating systems can read and write to. FAT and FAT32 are the most commonly used examples. This file system is very old, limited and doesn't support most modern features but is compatible across many if not most operating systems.