Pem, you really seem to know what you're talking about, so maybe I can run my whole plan past you and the rest of the guys here
I currently have 80GB and 20GB ATA133 drives. I use Windows XP on the 80GB drive, and Linux on the 20GB one.
My plan went like this: to buy two SATA drives for use as a RAID array under Windows XP (my motherboard supports this). Then format my 80GB drive, and use that for Linux (and probably bin the 20GB one to make some room in my case). I'd probably allocate 10GB or so on the latter drive as a FAT32 partition, so swap data between Windows and Linux (Linux can't write to NTFS currently, and I don't know what the RAID drivers are like).
But it's just dawned on me that I could also put an image of my Windows installation CD, and possibly even the Suse DVD, onto that 10GB partion, and install from there. Far quicker and easier than using CDs. Is this possible, or am I dreaming? Could I boot using a Windows 98 floppy, change to the installation parition and then run setup from there? Does Linux have a programme that would start installation from MS-DOS, or do they *require* you to boot straight into Linux? And how would I go about setting up the paritions in the first place?
All answers gratefully received... and apologies if I haven't explained myself very well. It's late!