Right. I warned you I'd be asking questions!
I'll pile them in one at a time - or rather, a topic at a time.
While I'm putting together the all-singing, all-dancing box, I intend housing Lenny on a 500 GB IDE drive in a nice comfy tray.
I did get advice on what partitions, sizes and filesystems were ideal, but Windows (or something, but I suspect Windows) sulked when I was talking Penguin and destroyed the boot sector, and left the e-mail/news database open, so when I repaired the boot sector the database refused to work, so I'm reverting to a slightly older backup one which is missing the post with the advice on it. (From a Debian developer, BTW)
I *COULD* open the database in Wordpad, but it's a b*****'s muddle...
So, rather than use the 40 GB HDD I mentioned somewhere down / there, I'm using the 500 GB one, loading everything on the 5 Lenny DVDs, and installing what I think I need.
How would the team suggest I go about it, bearing in mind it's probably four years since I played with installing a Linux distro? (Based on Sarge)
On a pristine HDD
Ffrom the gubbins on Lenny DVD 1?
Partition and format using Knoppix 5.3 first and present Lenny with fait accompli? (I've got a bone to pick with Knoppix, but I'll leave that one on the file.)
And what sizes of partitions, and with which filesystems, bearing in mind that Windows won't be present to meddle?
I was intending to use ext3 except for memory sticks, which will be ext2 - but, what is XFS, and, pros and cons?