By deafult LINUX can read/write Fat/Fat32 and only read NTFS partition. TO be albe to write to ntfs partition you must install ntfs3g.
By defaul Windows 95,NT can read/write only FAT partitions, 95osr2,NT-sp3,98,98se,Me,2K,XP,2k3,VIsta can read/write Fat/FAt32, and 2k,XP,2k3,VIsta can read/write to Fat/Fat32/Ntfs.
TO be able in Windows to access linux partitions you must install ext2 ifs or fsdriver (or other just search on google) . With some you can read/write ext2 and only read ext3.