Optimal USB HDD Format for MAC + PC Network

Hello, longtime PC user finally converted to Mac.
I have a new 13" MB and the new Airport Extreme. I have a Western Digital USB HDD that I would like to set up over the Airport Network so that it is accessible by the primary computer (Mac) as well as the PC (XP).
The question is, what is the most usefull way to format the WD drive, so that the Mac can read write, and the PC can at least read, hopefully write? HFS+? FAT? A combination with partitions?
And, I plan on using Bootcamp for several existing applications, storing the files etc. on the WD drive (as opposed to the Mac internal drive). So the second question is how to best incorporate Bootcamp functionality.
Thanks in advance, I have scoured the forums and no concise answer for how to optimize this type of network (Mac primary, best functionality of PCs secondary) could be found.
-Plastikos

Len D wrote:
I believe that if you are going to have this HDD plugged into the USB port of the Airport Extreme, then you must format it HFS+. The Windows machine can still read and write to it because the Airport Extreme makes the drive appear to Windows as a friendly format.
Wouldn't it just treat it as a network drive that's essentially format "agnostic" (i.e. it doesn't really care)? That's what you've got with internet servers that could have storage in any drive format that's compatible with the server, but the data is transmitted as TCP/IP.
Just as an aside, FAT32 has the limitations of a 4 GB single file size limit. This can easily be reached with things such as DVD images or large archive files.

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