Well I got it working. One other person has it going to, that I am aware of. I am using mandrake-linux 9.1 and If I use linNeighborhood to mount the drive (ships with mandrake) then the volume is read & write. I've had several people warn me of expected problems, but I have so far had none or seen any reported, reading & writing to NTFS from linux.

Mandrake added a feature that allows you to re-partition an NTFS drive, to install linux. Coupled with the linNeighborhood interface. If you view this entire thread, you should see the whole story.

Best regards