Hard Drives mounting icon and formating

[Richard]

Coming from a Mac desktop, I'm use in having  the hard drives, mounted 
(shown) on the desktop
then I would access the hard drive for files..etc.

Now is there a way to put a icon on the desktop of each hard drive,
and be able to double click, and view All Files. ( at root level) man level.
--

Second:
I have two hard drives,
once is on the ATA bus (Storage)
and the second (MAIN) running on SCSI on a Adaptec Card

Now, I need to re-format the ATA drive (Storage)

Q. (newbie) what format? I was looking at the disk gui,
and there a several option: Since this drives, is only going to be used
for dumping files....(mp3) .pdf..and whatever, (also this unit will be 
shared)
What format would work best, and Most important how would I do this.

I did see, vFat, but not sure.


Major Thanks -
Rich