Will this work Duel Boot

I would like to duel boot Win98se and Win XP Pro NTFS. I have two HD's 1-10gig and 1- 20gig.
Here is what I would like to do, put 98 and XP on the 10-gig and have the 20-gig for Apps, Data and games.
Questions:
What size should the partition's on the OS HD be?
The apps HD need's to be FAT32 correct?
Will both partations on OS drive be primary partation's?
Will both OS's be able to use the apps on the other HD?
Do I need a boot program?
If at a later time I wanted to load Linux would it need to be on the OS HD or say on a different HD?

Thanks
BobW

 

If you are going to put your apps on the other drive split the 10GB drive 50/50. Win XP on a duel-boot system doesn't need to be on a primary partition because it is redirected from the primary partition by ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini. The reason they say an OS needs to be on a primary partition is so that the BIOS can find it to boot it and the BIOS won't look for it. Be careful installing Linux after Win XP on a multi-boot system. Linux will write a partition at the start of the drive that it is installed on, if it is installed on the same drive as Win XP the partition will be before the XP partition and you would need to edit boot.ini to reflect the change although you can't see the change because Win XP doesn't display Linux partitions and Linux doesn't display Windows partitions. This shouldn't affect your set up but if you lnstalled XP on the second drive than installed Linux on the same drive it would cause Win XP to not boot till you edit boot.ini to point to the second drive second partition instead of the first partition.