vmware basic networking questions

I am new to VMWare and need help figuring some basic things out.
Should be easy for those more experience than I; but hope this will
also help some others out there that like to work in Linux and must
also have access to M$ applications.

Here's the situation:

- 'whitie' is a dual-booted, somewhat dated, RH9/WinXP machine (256M
RAM, 700Mhz CPU). Has an old 4G HD (hda partition) with the all my
Windows files, under FAT file system, and a newer 40G HD (hdb
partition) with RH9. The boot HD is the 4G one. (I know since when I
removed it, the machine don't boot!)

- 'blackie' is my new Dell Dimension 2400 (512M RAM, 80G HD, 2.2GHz
CPU). Wiped off XP Home ed. that it came with, installed RH9 over it
(which felt really good.). I've installed VMWare WkStn 4, and it works
fine. Chose the NTFS file system during install (since it was the
default).

Here's what networking I've done:
- can dial out on a phone modem on whitie.
- configured networking in Linux on both machines to ping each other
over their NIC interface (eth0).
- attempted networking under Windows but currently bogged down in
confusion.

Here's what I want to do:
- move the 4G HD out of whitie and into blackie, so it can be accessed
directly by blackie without going over the network connection. This
would avoid, I hope, having to reinstall all my Win apps and data.
- use whitie as a pure Linux machine as my firewall, development local
test webserver, etc.

So, the questions:
- is it advisable to move the 4G HD from whitie to blackie? If so, how
do I make the hdb partition on whitie bootable? Once installed in
blackie, will Windows under VMWare recognize it?
- if not advisable, what to do? Should I install VMWare on whitie too,
to allow MS networking? Or is there some way to mount hda in whitie
from blackie such that I can access my Windoz apps on whitie from
blackie?
- assuming I get the Windows/VMWare stuff straightened out, I assume I
just need to make whitie a gateway to allow blackie to access the web?

Any helpful comments appreciated.

TIA,
--rick