Linux/XP shared data partition

I've just repartitioned my system to have 3 disk partitions, NTFS for XP, ReiserFS for SuSE, and FAT32 for a shared data location. I'm not really happy with using FAT32 though. I know it's pretty crappy in general, and I've read some horror stories of lost data, etc.

I've seen descriptions of tools for mounting EXT2 in Windows (Ext2 IFS for windows http://www.fs-driver.org). It's not clear though if this would be a good idea either. There's no ext3 journaling support in it, and I'm not sure if this would lead to corrupted data when using it under windows.

Is it just a bad idea to try to have a shared data partition? I've read people saying that it's better to just have a space for swapping files between systems, rather than actualy data storage.

Does anyone else have experience doing this or reccomendations regarding fs types?

i use fat32 for all windows partitions and i have an XP install on fat32 for well over a year now. no data corruption/loss/whatever. i wouldn't worry that much.

do you happen to know if ext2/3 supports UTF filenames? Several of my mp3 files with odd characters in the filenames are garbled on the fat32.

i'm pretty sure it does. when saving a file or reading one with an odd name you might have to use \ to escape things like $ or & or spaces.