Best way to share data?

[captaincheeno]

I'm a newb when it comes to Linux, but I have a laptop with Ubuntu on it (can't remember which version, it's a couple of months old) and I want to be able to share an external 500gig HD between my Windows desktop and my Linux laptop. How should I format the external HD? Is a FAT32 partition the only way to go? And if I must use FAT32, do I have to separate it into a bunch of 32gig chunks? The external HD will house all of my mp3s, pictures, movies, etc.

Any ideas?

 

[eeyrjmr]

Well...

FAT32 while is the more guaranteed RW from both it suffers from being crap

so you can either format as Ext3 (linux Filesystem) or NTFS (windows filesystem)
Linux can RW safely to NTFS (via the ntfs-3g FUSE driver) and windows can safely write to Ext2 via other drivers

really your call.

 

[captaincheeno]

So as long as I install the ntfs-3g FUSE driver on they linux laptop, I shouldn't have a problem moving/adding/deleting things off of the external HD if I format in NTFS?