Formatting an internal HDD...

[Revale]

The goal:
Bought a new HDD for a dell laptop, dell is pretty clever at propiotarizing their machines and making it VERY difficult to upgrade and the like without their paid consent. I purchased a new HDD for a dell laptop and it needs to be formatted, the cd/dvd internal drive is shot (apparently a known issue) and I have an external CD/DVD that the computer wont boot from to install an OS on to it.

What I have tried:
-Running an OS disk off of both the internal and external cd/dvd drive- FAIL

The new plan:
Ok this may sound screwey and I have no idea if it will work. I want to take the new HDD i just bought that is SATA and plug it into my tower computer (it has 4 SATA HDD slots). The tower runs Windows 7. I want to formatt the HDD using the Windows Vista disk provided by dell for my laptop, on my tower computer. Then upgrade that same HDD using a Windows 7 Upgrade disk. I want to do all of this using my tower computer NOT my laptop. Then if this should happen to work... I will have formatted my HDD for the laptop.

Does anyone know if this can actually work?

[ispano]

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/m.../dd535816.aspx

[Revale]

I am working with a Windows 7 UPGRADE disk, and I am not sure if this will work the same way. I will give it a whirl though. Will a regular USB storage device work for this, or would it need to be like a USB HDD?