File System for USB Disk?

[James Pifer]

I have 160 gig hard disk installed in a USB 2 enclosure.

What is the best file system to put on it?

It would be nice to be able to plug it into both Linux and Windows
machines. Obviously NTFS is not an option. Windows can't read linux
drives. So what does that leave me with?

Linux is my primary choice, so I put ext3 on it using qtparted. 

When I plug it into my laptop, the light on the usb enclosure flashes,
but I don't see anything under /media. Is there any way to force a
refresh? /etc/fstab has this:
/dev/sdb1               /media/usbdisk          ext3   
pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

Once I get that working, how do I deal with permissions since my userid
will not be able to write to it? Should I give my userid ownership of
/media/usbdisk? Will those permissions "stick" when I remove and plug
the drive in again?

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
James