NTFS or ext3 for data drive to be used in ubuntu/xp system

[Alex_L]

Having dabbled with ubuntu and suse over the last few months, I fancy giving linux a go as more than just something to play with.

I'll continue dual-booting for the moment. However, now that I'll be using ubuntu or suse day to day I'll want access to my music/videos that I currently have on an external Western digital my book pro drive. Its currently formatted as NTFS. The question is do I try and use NTFS read/write in linux or reformat as ext3 assuming the drive supports it (i'm not sure?) and use something like:

http://www.fs-driver.org/download.html

I know when I first started trying ubuntu that NTFS read/write was pretty sketchy and experimental, how much has changed in the last few months?

How reliable is adding support for reading ext3 partitions in windows xp?

 

[Alex_L]

Sorry, I wasn't very clear in explaining what I wanted advice on (apologies). I won't be trying to install linux onto an ntfs drive. The NTFS external drive is purely a data drive. I'm just wondering whether its feasible to use the NTFS external drive in linux (both reading and writing), or would I be better formatting it to ext3 and getting windows to access the ext3 file system using somethign like the link I posted.

sorry for the confusion.

 

[Alex_L]

Thanks for the help guys. Sounds like NTFS read/write has really matured over the last few months.

Think I'll give it a go leaving it formatted as NTFS for the moment and see how it goes. Just can't face reloading 300gbs of data from DVD at the moment.