It should boot ok as blixanz says, the OS needs to be on the first partition of the drive which must be under 8GB or your system will become very ubnstable.

Try installing the drive and then booting from the OS CD, check the HD is ok and repair if needed, then reformat/partition if necesssary.

I've found that the very ocasional drive that will simply will not format to any Mac standars, only Windoze. If that is the case then you may need a 3rd party re-formating tool.