I have a Windows partition formatted in NTFS format, and Ubuntu installed on a second partition formatted in ext3 format. Does anyone know of a way to read/write to an NTFS partition from Ubuntu??
Reading NTFS partitions is supported natively in the kernel. To load it immediately, type <font face="monospace">sudo modprobe ntfs</font> at a command prompt. To have it load automatically when you boot, add <font face="monospace">ntfs</font> to your /etc/modules file. Once the module is loaded, you just need to mount the partition. If you need help with that, let me know and I'll go into greater detail there.
Writing to NTFS partitions is supported, but very limited. In fact it's limited enough that it's not terribly useful. If you want to be able to easily share files between your OSen, I'd recommend adding a smallish FAT32 partition. Both Windows and linux can read and write to that with no problem.
Adding a FAT32 was an option I've thought about. I'm thinking about installing an old 40GB in my computer, and creating two partitions on it. One for Windows, the other for Linux. Then, formatting my 200GB into a FAT32 format so I can read it from both OS's. Is there any problem with that which I am not anticipating?
FAT32 isn't too efficient at large disk sizes. The other option is make the large partition EXT2 or EXT3 and use the windows driver at http://www.fs-driver.org/ I have used this with great success.
The other problem with 200 GB FAT32 is that windows imposes a 32 GB limit on creating FAT32 partitions, but from what I understand it can read/write from ones bigger than that.
"The other problem with 200 GB FAT32 is that windows imposes a 32 GB limit on creating FAT32 partitions, but from what I understand it can read/write from ones bigger than that."
You can easily get around this by using fdisk (in Linux, of course) to make the FAT32 partition. I have a 100GB FAT32 partition on my 250GB drive and it works just fine in Linux and Windows