Using Current Windows-based External Hard drive on Mac

Hello,
I have a MacBook Pro now. I have BootCamp installed with Windows Vista. Working fine. I also have a Western Digital 160 GB external harddrive with data on it from my old Windows only computer. In other words, it is formatted with NFTS.
I want to be able to do one of the following things:
1. Partition the external drive in half so I can use half of it for new Mac data while keeping my old Windows data
2. Seamlessly use the external drive as is between Mac OS X and Windows being able to transfer data. Right now, if I boot into Mac OSX, I can see the drive on the desktop and actually see the files and folders. But if I try to drag anything to the drive, I get permission denied.
Any hints here? Basically, in a nutshell, I am going to have data from both Windows and Mac OSX that I would like to save on the same external hard drive
Thanks.

You won't likely be able to make one hard drive with two different partition types if it is already partitioned (partly anyway) in Windows in NTFS. Mac Disk Utility won't deal with the unpartitioned space AFAIK.
It cannot hurt to try in Disk Utility and see if it shows the 60GB only or refuses to mount at all which I suspect will be what happens.
Anything but My Book is the answer (I have seen at least a dozen My Book complaints here) - normally with macs there are a few trusted makers and one interface - firewire (NOT USB). I use LaCie drives - 3000GB worth - and for portable I have an OWC, they make very high quality cases and drives and nice and small.
I have a few others that I do not rely on like a 320GB USB drive that was $100 and the drive inside is worth more than the whole external drive actually cost which is why I bought it. And a small USB Maxtor for use with Parallels since Parallels won't see Firewire drives.

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