questions re installing widows 7 ulitimate on a new hard drive

hello,
first, i have a toshiba satellite a215 s5839 laptop with a dead hard drive, i am upgrading from 160 gigs to 320 gigs. i have already upgraded the ram from 2 gigs to 4 gigs, so i'm ready for win7 64 bit in that respect. the question is should i install the win 7 os directly to the new drive or should i install another os first? also do i have to install the bios first, or is that already on the computer independent of a hard drive? i do not have any vista installation media at all, however i do have an install disc for xp professional sp3. also i assume that the win 7 disc will supply adequite drivers to at least get me started, is that correct? please let me know, thanks
steviedotcom

hey,
for your new hdd, are you create partition?
its not necessary to install any other old OS.
Just directly install your windows 7.

hey,
for your new hdd, are you create partition?
its not necessary to install any other old OS.
Just directly install your windows 7.

thank you for your answer. as far as partitioning goes, doesn't windows 7 setup create the partitions? after i install, i may create a data partition as a precaution against data loss.
steve

if you want a data partition you will need to specifiy the partions in the setup unless you use something like partition magic after the installation is complete. You wont need to do anything with the Bios. If you version of windows 7 ultimate is and upgrade during the install it may ask for an older operating system and at the time you can just put a vista or xp cd in the drive. Then it will ask you to reinsert the windows 7 disk