Drive questions and broken flash slots

I just picked up my first MPC but it has a broken memory card slot. I want to upgrade to a disk drive anyway and my question is this - if I install the disk drive will it be able to be formatted by the existing software on the mpc? Since I cannot use the flash card i cannot access my computer to update the mpc. Am I stuck buying the part before I can upgrade to a disk even though I am never going to use the flash drive again? These are f'ing expensive - more expensive than the drive and harness together. Thanks for any help you can shed on this dilemma.

if you are running jjos, you can update the os via the internal hard disk.

hey thanks for the tip - since this post i have discovered that the os is 1.7 so i can't install a drive anyway until i update it. So it looks like i have to spend essentially $125 just to be able to update it. Oh well.