Hello, I recently got a WD external hard drive and I want advice.
Here is the problem, currently the external is using a vfat drive and I know all too well about the issues of running a fat drive on such a large device (its 250GB)
There are lots of limits with fat, now I would format the drive to ext3 but I also will use this external HD for windows as well.
Now my windows drive is on its last legs so I really dont want to bother installing more crap on it, so for compatibility I am thinking of just makiing this external HD NTFS.
Now I know NTFS sucks, but I need a FS both operating systems can use and read without much modification.
I use Ubuntu and it has NTFS-3G that can read/write NTFS.
My real worry is my windows drive, I really dont want to add anything to it that I dont want to or need to for that matter and i know i will have to install crap on windows to make EXT3 work with windows and I really dont want to add it because of the condition of my windows drive.
Your thoughts?

Install ntfsprogs and use mkntfs.

Edit: Sorry, thought you were asking "how" not "should".
I avoid NTFS unless I have a Windoze available, because to fix any errors, you (currently) have to do it from 'doze.
Probably not a concern for you.