Impossible? Install w/o bootable drive, or boot another hd, umount, and switch hd's?

I have a Compaq laptop with no cdrom or floppy drives. It cannot boot from the network or the usb (btw, I have a small external usb 3.5" hard drive and may be able to - hack - run a desktop cdrom drive plugged into the drive enclosure), and the hard drive is blank.

I have a spare hard drive, 4 Gb, with Win98 and an old version of Vector Linux installed. This boots just fine, and can access the usb hard drive or my flash drive just fine. Now, is there any possible way to install Linux (or Windows, for that matter, if I can install Windows I can install Linux from Windows) on the blank hard drive? Can I load the operating system and then unmount the root filesystem, switch to the larger (blank) hard drive, and then mount it and install? Please let me know if there is any possible way.
Thanks

Many Distros have options for various install types, though not quite as easy as booting from a floppy or CD, you can still get an install to run from a Hard Drive..

example: http://www.debian.org/releases/woody...-install-drive
http://www.debian.org/releases/woody...ot-drive-files

Other Distros should have something similar , Pick you r Distro and check their install Manual for directions..