[Saintly]

No problem...
when trying to start in safe mode i normaly start pressing F8 as soon as anything comes up on the screen and i keep tapping on that key untill the menu comes up.. it's very easy to miss if you try to just push the button once.
as for the new HDD... i would reccommend the system partition to be 20Gb. 5gb would get filled in 1/2 a day.
The way my system is setup at home is with c: and d: on one drive and e: on abother drive. c: = system and programs d: = files, vids, pics, games e: = other mass files and a copy of vital files / docs from c: or d:.

Another thing i do is once i get the C: drive setup and installed just the way i like it i take a ghost image and save it to the e: drive. that way i can restore the system to a configured working state in about 10 mins if something goes haywire. (havn't had to do this kind of restore for quite a while).