How to create a bootable hard drive under xp?

Hello,

I have an old laptop with harddrive only (no floppy, no cd) and need to upgrade harddrive. I tried many discimage programs, but none worked with imaging to external USB HDD, i have USB 1 only.

Is there any way to create bootable to DOS or XP bootloader harddrive?
My desktop had CD drive, but no floppy either.

THx