3 partitions: one with ntfs, one with fat32 for exchanging files and
one with ext3 or whatever filesystem you want to use with Linux.
Reading and writing to ntfs is currently still a problem for Linux. It
is getting better but in the mean time it is better to use a common
fat32 partition if you want access from both operation systems.
This glosses over swap partition process. In the near future Linux
will be able to reliably read from and write to ntfs filesystems but
until then an intermediary is needed (fat32 with its' 4G file size.)
later,
charles.....