Format external HD for use with Mac Network and PC

System config: Home network: Mac Pro & MacBook Pro connected via AirPort Extreme. Both run OS X 10.5.6. The Mac Pro also runs Windows XP Pro. Work computer: Dell, Latitude D830 running Windows XP Pro.
Situation: I have a Western Digital WDMT5000TN 500GB Portable HD, (FireWire 800 & USB). The WDMT5000TN came formatted Mac OS Extended, which, as I suspected, could neither be read nor written to in XP. I reformatted the drive NTFS in XP Pro. This worked well with XP but was read only in OS X.
Ideally, I would like to format the drive so that it is both read/write capable with both OS X & XP Pro and handle file transfers in excess of 100 MB. If this is not possible my second choice would be to have the drive read/write OS X & read only XP, given that I upload mostly in the Apple domain & would be able to perform backups of it’s contents using Time Machine with OS X.
If anyone has a formatting recommendation or related information that may help I would appreciate your insight. Thank you.

Two basic options:
1. Format the drive FAT32 (MS-DOS) which is read/write on both Windows and OS X.
2. Leave the drive formatted NTFS and install software on OS X to enable read/write access. The options are: a.) Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X - 6.5.1; b.) MacFuse and NTFS-3G 2009.2.1u1; and, c.) NTFS for Mac 1.0.

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