Prepairing new hard drive for OS installation

[bkadiev]

HI guys,
I recently had a hard drive failure on a Toshiba laptop. Everyone I checked with, told me it was unrepairable, so I bought online a new hard drive. I got the exact same model and size.The seller informed me it was blank, wiped out etc... I installed it and the BIOS recognizes it. However when the laptop is powered up I only get a blinking dash in a totally black screen-I get the same when I insert the Windows XP installation disk and when I insert the system recovery disk that came with the original laptop back in 2005. (this one gives me the "wrong machine error" which I know how to overcome, and starts some sort of a scan in a DOS screen,which then fades to the black screen again)
My research online makes me believe I have to somehow partition the drive before installing the OS, i.e. to "prepare" it for the OS installation. Am I right or I am missing something? Do you know how to do this without Windows running-what kind of software do I need to get. Is there anything good and free available on the market. I have UBCD4WIN,which boots but cannot figure it out from there.
All help will be highly appreciated. Thank you in advance
laptop: Toshiba satellite M35X-S163
hard drive Toshiba MK6021GAS- HDD2183

[Expertz]

I would suggest you to connect the new hard drive in another computer/laptop if it is possible for you. Then simply partition it with any software, something like partition magic software will do the trick for you. After that connect the same hard drive to your laptop, and put in the CD in the CD drive and boot via cd, simply then just install the Windows OS of your choice in your laptop, thats it.