Your camera should work absolutely fine if it's a standard USB drive model (like every one I've ever seen, ever). Just plug it in and a nice icon should pop up on the desktop. You can test this with a liveCD in.
ATI drivers do work, the problem is just installing them. The internet is littered with people who install them but they somehow still don't work. ATI's attitude has been that we should be grateful what support we get.
Fair enough, but that's why I bought an Nvidia card for my new computer
It sounds like there's no reason you can't do everything you need in Linux and if all you're doing is standard office stuff then 20GB should be enough. The largest Linux installs (including all the programmes you'll need for any task) would be about 4GB.
You can't revert from NTFS back to FAT32, like most things MS, it's a one-way forced upgrade process unfortunately.
If 20GB really isn't enough, then you could try copying the large files from your linux drive to your RAID array from Windows.
Interoperability is kept deliberately poor from the Windows side of things but I'm sure I heard of a programme that lets you read Linux drives. A google may turn up something.
Honestly though, I would try Linux out first before worrying too much about space - you may not like it.
I'd suggest you try the Knoppix LiveCD first. Then try installing a distribution on your 20GB drive - start with the latest Suse probably. They will both use the KDE desktop by default (supposedly the most windows-like), Ubuntu uses Gnome which is another good alternative you may wish to try out.
[ 04-19-2006, 12:01 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]