Why haven't you considered putting linux on the second hard drive,
since it is bigger? Any way, either way, linux will require two partitions,
one for the bulk of the OS and one for swap, virtual memory.

Your linux partitions will not appear to windows, and therefore will not be
assigned drive letters. Linux has a different system of naming drives and
partitions. You can see the windows drives from linux, hovever.

You will not be able to run any windows software from linux, but will find
lots of software installed that will do a lot of the things you have been
doing in windows.