Writing between ext3 filesystem and whatever Vista uses

Long story short, I have a computer that has two harddrives. One harddrive has Ubuntu with an ext3 filesystem, and the other drive has Vista Home Basic with whatever filesystem Vista uses. Ubuntu is running the 64 bit version of the OS, and I believe Vista is running the 32 bit version since the box says I have to send away for the 64 bit disks and I don't plan on doing that.

My entire purpose for having Vista is for games, random applications that just suck on Ubuntu/Wine/64-bit, Silverlight for Netflix, and debugging JS/HTML/CSS/etc in a Windows enviroment.

Occasionally I would like to move files between the two operating systems. I have a few computers on my network with FTP/SSH/SVN servers running on them so I can easily move files around that way, but I would like to be able to do it without any of the other systems present since I don't have them up and running all the time.

My first instinct is that Vista is using NTFS and I could get Ubuntu to read/write to the NTFS partition, but I don't know much about how Vista works. If I could do that though, I could just set aside a dedicated folder on the Vista disk for these transfers and do all the moving with Ubuntu.

I'm beyond scared of doing anything like this with Vista though. I went a good long while on XP without any real problems, but I rarely fooled around under the hood. I had Vista for less than 24 hours and already made it bluescreen with a soundcard driver forcing me to go back to the last known good configuration.

In any event, I guess my question is how should I go about swapping files between my two operating systems ?

How you considered samba? We use it for several network drives. They server for storage as necessary and we have users in various flavors of Windows. Seems stable & I've never detected any type of additional lag. Works just like a windows share and I fully enjoy the ability to transfer back and forth with ease.

That looks like I'd have to have a second system running at all times in order to utilize it, since it would only be running when the OS it's installed under is active on the system in question. Am I missing how this works ?

Ack, yeah, my bad. I read the OP as two concurrent systems. Didn't catch that it's a dual boot.

Vista is NTFS, so you should be fine for setting up a dedicated folder as you mentioned.

Works like a charm.

Ubuntu already picks up the disk, when I double click it I'm presented with a prompt for my administrative password to mount the disk, which when done lets me browse around the NTFS disk just like any other disk. I'll probably restrict my usage to my Vista Desktop folder though.

I'd mounted NTFS disks of dead Windows systems before, but there was a bunch of manual mounting and configuration file voodoo involved.

I guess you found a better way than what I would have suggested... which would be, "get a flashdrive"

Vista is a total failure for Windows haha ... although lots of people us it to see this types of problems... I'm glad that I don't have enough money to buy Vista

I've had Vista for a few days now and for the most part it's been pretty nice. (I'd used Vista before, just not on my own systems) I don't see what all the fuss is about.

The reason I got a bluescreen was the soundcard I had here doesn't have Vista drivers so I tried to work with XP drivers in compatability mode.

I picked up a Vista-ready sound card for $10 at CompUSA that works just fine for my purposes.

Glad this works. Sounds fairly straightforward, too. I hadn't thought of it, but this could really come in handy. I think I'll steal your idea and set one up some time.