[techtalk] second hard disk

[Helena Verrill]

I wonder if anyone can suggest how best to set up my
second hard disk.
The first one is about 2Gb and is pretty much full.
So, I bought a new 20Gb hard disk.
My first idea was that I'd just use it for storage, though I
don't know if this is the best thing or not.

I first formatted and partitioned it under windows,
and then reformatted it under linux, without repartitioning.
This was OK.  But, later I resized the partitions including
the one I'd left as fat, and now windows can't read any of
it, and the windows utility for dealing with disk partioning&
formatting will only offer to reformat the whole thing, and
remove all the data, and now I've collected more data I've
just been dumping on the new disk (while using linux), and
I don't really want to have to move it all and move it back
after reformatting etc with windows and linux again...
is there any way round this?

Also, I've just been using the new disk for storage, but,
I wondered, would there be any advantage of changing it to
the boot disk?  I want to upgrade from linux (red hat) 5.2 to
6.2.something.
Given that I have so little space left on the old disk, is
this going to be possible there - maybe it will be difficult
to have enough space for the new and old kernels on the first
disk... 
(If I get a new kernel, then it might not be so important to
have any extra space for windows, since various hardware will
be supported by linux, and I wont need to use windows (at least
for the moment).)

Anyone got any advice?
I'm sorry this email is somewhat vague.  Just advice like what 
size partitions on which disks for what use would be useful.

Thanks,
Helena