Problem initialising a hard drive?

ok well something went wrong with the boot on my hard drive, its only a 250 gig so i just went out and bought a tb. I need to initialise it but it obviously wont recognise it from windows install. i have a laptop i can hook a usb to sata dock to but im wondering if that will work. So my question is, has anyone ever initialised a brand new hdd through a usb docking station? thanks