I want to start from fresh. Wipe, format, install.

Hi all,
After recent troubles with my Macintosh HD I have managed to back everything up I need to keep and I would like to completely wipe the hard disk (which has problems) and perform a fresh install of Leopard.
My current problem is:
The hard disk is corrupt or has a damaged directory. The Macintosh HD side will not boot and Disk Utility reports an Invalid Node Structure. I have OS X currently installed on what was my Windows HD side of the hard disk.
Will I be able to completely wipe the hard disk, format it and install Leopard with just one partition?
If so then instructions on doing so would be extremely helpful!

Basically at the moment, my 250 GB hard disk has a 30GB partition which was for Windows when I had Boot Camp running. With the Macintosh HD being unusable I resorted to what was the Windows HD and formatted it for mac, then installed Leopard.
All i really want to do is make my hard drive back into 1 partition and install a fresh version of Leopard on there. But as mentioned with my Invalid Node Structure issue, will a format of the hard disk solve this as I thought it was only a directory problem, not physical damage to the disk.
All my important files are backed up now so whatever is on the hard disk, doesn't matter.

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