USB external drive help, NTFS, FAT32, EXT3

Hi,

I have been using linux (red hat) for years both on desktops
and laptops. I've been using Seagate 160 GByte USB drives
(about 3 years old now) formatted as FAT32 and everything has been
fine. I use the external drives for data and need both read
and write access.

Then I bought a seagate 320 GByte drive and linux would not
recognize it. These larger drives are now coming formatted
NTFS. I tried formatting it under windows, and windows would
only format it as NTFS. I tried formatting with partition
commander as FAT32 and it would not format. Someone told
me the disks have firmware that only supports NTFS (anyone
know if that is true?).

I need a source for large reliable portable USB drives, 320 GB
or larger that I can format FAT32 (unfortunately they need to work with
windows too). Please give recommendations and experiences you
have had. Also large USB drives for desktop backup, 1.5 TB or
larger (e.g. that I can format as EXT3).

Alternatively, have people had experiences with NTFS usb drives
(and internal drives) under linux? Are the NTFS drivers stable
and solid? Why doesn't linux come with NTFS support built in?

Alternative 2: is there an addition to windows (XP) that will
read and write to EXT3 file systems? I would rather go that route,
as I prefer the linux file system.

I see seagate sells USB drives for Macs. Are these formatted with a
different file system? I could not find that info on their product
pages.

Finally, I have read about the seagate drives having a sleep mode
that has caused some problems for linux. Have the linux drivers
been updated, and if so, what version should I look for?

Thanks for your help,
Roger
.

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