Hello all. This is my first time posting and I am interested into getting into bitcoins. I have a question and I hope someone can help me answer it. So here goes...

First, I have been reading the forums and like the idea of having a wallet for spending and a wallet for saving. So I would like to set that up. I have a small 8gb usb that I will carry around and a external hard drive with encrypted partitions for my savings wallet and where I will back up both wallets.

Setting up the savings wallet first:

1. Should I use linux or windows or does it matter?
2. Can I save these wallets and their respective backups in a truecrypt volume?
3. Should I make a hard copy of the wallet(s) (cd, or another USB, or in another partition on the external hard drive)?
4. The external hdd has four partitions (3NTFS, 1Ext4) with two of them encrypted with truecrypt. Any suggestions on how I should store the savings wallet and backups?

Now the spending wallet:

What I would like to do is make the usb a general purpose carry around stick. I want it to have an unencrypted area for truecrypt to run and normal files. Then using truecrypt, I want to have an outer volume for my important documents and portable apps. Then inside this, a hidden volume carrying my bitcoin wallet/client. I want to use bitcoins but have an enormous need for privacy and need to know if this kind of setup is possible. I saw the bootable solution for usb stick, but I don't want to boot a computer, just plug my stick in, open the encrypted volume, do my thing, and move on. More often it will be on a personal computer, but in case I am traveling, I want to be able to use it. Which brings the question again, linux or windows?

Thanks in advance for thoughts and considerations.