The best way to share a partition with Linux is to create an EXT2 filesystem and use revision 0 (aka GOOD_OLD_REV) as the filesystem format.
By using the GOOD_OLD_REV (revision 0) format you can avoid the ''dir_index'' and ''large_file'' issues encountered with DYNAMIC_REV (revision 1).
Here is an example of how you can create, format and check an EXT2 filesystem using the Linux native tools:
Code:
# mkfs -t ext2 -r 0 /dev/hda3
# fsck -C -t ext2 /dev/hda3
# tune2fs -c 20 -i 6m -L Share /dev/hda3
# fsck -C -t ext2 /dev/hda3
# tune2fs -l /dev/hda3
If you want or have a dual boot system, I suggest using GParted Live to prepare the partitions with EXT2-rev0, then install Linux, but without formatting the partitions.
This will ensure 100% compatibility with Linux.