Question in title - I need to know if my main windows drive can read and write files to a slave drive with a non-Windows filesystem. Was considering screwing around with a few Linux distros but not if it'll cost me my slave's functionality as a file-bitch.

Drives do not read or right files to or from anywhere.

Perhaps you want to know if Windows (which version) can read/write non-windows file systems. The answer is yes, using third party tools.

However, it is not a good idea to do this. Windows has been known to mess around with linux partitions it knows about (which have a drive letter in windows).

For your intended use, I would suggest resizing your file-bitch partition to make way for linux - the linux install disk has tools to do this safely. (Most users find themselves using the Windows partitions as the bitch after a while.) However, if your aim is just to have a look and see, I would suggest a more gradual approach by trying a live distribution first, then virtualisation. (The cool approach is to use a pendrive based distro.)

No problems so long as it's fat/fat32.
NTFS read/write is also now fairly well accepted in Linux - not all distros though.

So .... stick to fat32 (vfat) - I've been using it as common storage for years.

Simon: Thanks. One more question - if I were to follow your suggestion and resize my slave, would Linux be able to read and write files onto the bitch partition without trouble arising and without additional software?

Syg: Am I missing something here? I thought Linux couldn't be installed on a fat32 filesystem...am I completely and obscenely wrong about that?

I wan't suggesting that - I was suggesting a (separate) "shared" partition for data exchange/sharing.
Given you were planning on playing with Linux I presumed you had (or were prepared to find) space for the partitions. This would merley be one more partition to create.

Ah. Right now I'm using the latest version of Ubuntu on a partition on my slave, and while I can read files just fine from the NTFS partitions, I cannot write to them in any way (I get a read-only disk error). Is there a way around this?

The application you want is called ntfs-3g
This can be installed via aptitude.

sudo aptitude install ntfs3g

find out how to use it with

man ntfs3g

using this for read/write access involves editing the /etc/fstab file
for more details see http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Feisty

other suggestions...
gif2png ... converts (IP encumbered) .gif images to (free) .png images.

ffmpeg2theora ... converts proprietary format media files to the equivalent free format files. i.e. mp3 turns into ogg/vorbis and wmv turns into ogg/theora. Then you can play them without using dodgy plugins.