Re-formatting / erasing a corrupted hard disk from another machine?

Hi there,
I have a macbook pro that was running 10.6.3. The hard disk fell over and for some reason the DVD won't be recognised. When I boot my macbook I get a grey screen with a flashing folder with a question mark in it. I tried to boot to disk utility without luck (pressing command + R didn't bring up the DU). How do I go about reformatting / erasing the disk using another machine (I have another macbook pro running 10.7.5)? I assume once that is done then either the DVD will work properly or I can install from the internet?
Thanks!

If you are getting the flashing ? mark then either the drive has failed or the cable that goes from the drive to the logic board has failed. In either case that failed part will need to be replaced.
If the drive failed it has failed and the data on it is irretrievable. You should take the drive out of the older Mac and connect it to the newer Mac with a SATA to USB adapter. If you can read the drive that way then you can copy the data off it and the drive itself hasn't failed, the cable has.
Your Mac running 10.6.x Snow Leopard doesn't have access to the newer Recovery HD system like Mac's running Lion or Mt Lion.
But you can use your original OS X reinstall DVD or the retail Snow Leopard DVD you used to upgrade it from an older version of OS X to boot the system and use Disk Utility.

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Re-formatting / erasing a corrupted hard disk from another machine?

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