MobileDev

Equipment I have:

Seagate 40GB USB hard drive
GPartED live CD, latest version
Knoppix live CD, 4.0 or 4.1 (forget which one)

Some questions I have:

What do I have to format the USB drive as in order for Windows XP to recognize it as a "removable disk" and not set permissions?

Is it easier to install to USB from Windows or from within Knoppix?

Does the "tohd" command work with USB drive partitions?

Can the persistant home directory be used to save installed packages, or do I have to reinstall software every time I reboot?

What I have already done:
Formatted the USB hard drive into 2 FAT16 partitions (4GB each), 1 FAT32 (roughly 39 GB) and the rest is "Linux Swap".

What I want to do:
Make one of the other partions bootable and put Knoppix on it.
Create a "persistant home directory" on one of the USB drive partitions.
Make that directory work for both the CD original and the USB copy.

I am not very fond of the Terminal in Linux or the Command Prompt in Windows (drag-n-drop newbie). Any help you can give me on this would be very much appreciated.