I've installed Sarge (stable), but it's been a very long time since then. Sarge is quite acient by almost any standard (in fact Etch was to become stable last year, and isn't yet because the Debian group moves so slow and quibbles amoung itself. Etch is actually getting pretty old now.) I'm not clear on why you install is hanging, I thought it might be the master/slave issue but if you are getting past the partitioning question I no longer think that.

If you don't want the NTFS partition out there, I would just delete it before starting the install (wint a Windows or DOS tool). And I still suggest the net-install of Etch. the installer for Etch is much more advanced than the installer for Sarge.