Sharing external hard drive between Mac and PC

[Faded]

I’m looking to reformat my 250gb external hard drive at the weekend and starting over again with it.
I want to share the drive between my macbook and PC, however it will be primarily used on the macbook (creating backups and keeping all my photos/music/videos on it).

Whats the easiest way to share the drive?
Will I need additional software and whats format should I put the drive in?

 

[Prime]

3 Possibilities.

- Make the drive FAT32.
Pros: True portability accessible by both PC and Mac
Cons: maximum size of single file is 4gb

- Make the drive HFS+
Pro: native to the Mac, the primariy use. No maximum file size limit.
Cons: PC/Windows OS need to have Macdrive ($50) or another HFS read/write program installed.

- Make the drive NTFS so it's native to the PC.
Pro: native to pc and no maximum limit
Cons: Need an NTFS writer on the mac http://www.ntfs-3g.org/ http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/ which is free

Easiest is to make it Fat32 but you have to remember the file size limit which probably isn't ideal for making backups. Or you could partition the drive in 2 and remember to move items between partitions.

 

[Avalon]

Either format it to NTFS (as FAT32's file size limit is a PITA for most but if this isn't an issue for you then go FAT32) and use Paragon NTFS for MAC. NTFS Fuse also works but is slower, and ye the paragon software had issues a while back but it's been fine for me since the last update. Other option is format it HFS and use appropriate software on the windows box (I forget the name of the app I used last year)

*edit* Beaten again!