Don\'t believe the issue was the HDD is too small for Linux. Rather, it\'s too small for MS and Linux. That being said, I quite happily ran a Win98/Debian dual-boot for over a year on a 6.4 gig.
The key is to install Linux on the smaller parition (in my case it was 2.4 gig), mount the Win32 partition(s), and then store as much relevant data as possible on the Win32 paritions (so both OS\'s can access it). For example, I had Linux Apache using the same htdocs and php_includes directory as Win32 Apache. Not the best solution, but there\'s always a work about🙂
-geoff