The files I am looking to save are just videos, images, and text documents. My biggest worry is my music collection, but I have that saved on my Ipod (hence the Ipod question) and I am learning how to transfer music from the Ipod to Linux. I am not particularly worried about loosing the stuff that is not on the Ipod, because the majority of it I can get again. I've trimmed out what I don't feel I need. I do have free memory, 54.4 GB according to windows. I want a fresh start with my computer, and Linux, so I want to have everything wiped.

Oh, yes its on my C drive.

So you also want to get rid of windows...or you want to keep windows and also install Linux.

You basically have 2 options:
1. Keep Windows OS (prob NTFS) and videos etc (FAT) and load Linux.
2. Linux and videos.

In either case, make backups of videos etc.

If you really want to wipe Windows completely, the simple install for Linux would be to install and let it take over the system with defaults, then re-load videos from CD/DVD.
That way you have back-ups anyway, and you don't need to get into partitioning convolutions