Dual Booting XP & LL2 with shared data partition.

[m654321]

This may actually be what you meant, but will clarify best way just in case there is any confusion.

You don't actually want LL's full /home to be on that data partition.  LL's /home will have not only data files in it, but also program config files.  Since you want the data partition to be shared with Windows it must be formatted as either NTFS or FAT32, neither of which handle Linux permissions/ownership of files the way Ext4 does and that could cause problems if you try to make /home on that partition.

Thanks gold_finger, yes when I said the contents of 'home' I meant just the data folders (and the files contained in them) e.g. Documents, Downloads, Music, etc... 

Many thanks for the advice for formatting the /mnt/DATA partition as NTFS rather than ext4 to allow MS Windows access - I had actually overlooked that point so will go back and reformat /mnt/DATA as NTFS and relabel. Also I didn't know about the separate (2GB) root partition - thankyou for that too.

Your continued support is really helpful and I've learnt a lot of useful tips from you since moving over from Win XP in April.

Kind regards
Mike