Yes, if you boot from the disc/USB and run Setup it will ask about desired target partition to install Windows to. At that point you have some buttons below the partition list. One should say ''Advanced'' or similar. This will reveal further buttons with the possibility to delete, add and format partitions. But you will probably not be able to kill the Recovery partition from there.
@Mean_as I see you're still wrestling with this. Here's another thought doesn't involve portable hd . Google Hiren's boot cd. download it, burn it to a cd and boot the computer with it. About 3/4 way down Hiren's web page there's a section called partition tools, and in that section there's a free program called Partition wizard. Run that, delete your recovery partition , delete your vista partition, and expand the win7 partition to use the whole drive. Then reboot on the hard drive. If it fails then boot on the cd and use one of Hiren's master boot record tools like MBRWizard to fix it. Do a lot of reading about these tools before you try them, so you won't get any nasty surprises. I do like to have a backup of what I want to install before I start in case I wreck things. ...T