Trying to get a partition shared between WinXP and FC3

[lesliek]

I am using the version of parted which either came with my Linux distribution, 
Fedora Core 3, or was installed later by my updating that distribution. (I 
can't remember which.) The parted version number shown when I query it is 
1.6.15-5.

Following are details regarding my second hard drive, on which Fedora Core 3 
lives:

Disk /dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/hdb2              14        4672    37423417+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb3            4673        4800     1028160   83  Linux
/dev/hdb4            4801        4865      522112+   5  Extended
/dev/hdb5            4801        4865      522081   82  Linux swap

When I installed Fedora Core 3, I tried to make what turned out to be hdb3 have 
a vfat filesystem. For reasons which I don't understand, that didn't happen. 
Instead, I got an ext3 filesystem.

I wanted to have a vfat partition on my second hard drive because I understood 
that, in that way, files in that partition could be shared by Fedora Core 3 and 
by Windows Professional XP, the latter living on my first hard drive, where it 
uses the NTFS filesystem.

I've read the info document for my version of parted and it seems to me that I 
could change the filesystem on hdb3 from ext3 to vfat simply by doing, as root:

# parted /dev/hdb mkfs 3 fat32

However, I'm quite nervous about this all, since I'm very much a beginner at 
Linux, and so I have three questions:

1. Am I right to think that I can change the filesystem on hdb3 from ext3 to 
vfat simply by issuing the above command?

2. Is my making that change likely to affect adversely anything on hdb?

3. If the answer to 1 is yes and the answer to 2 is no, will Windows recognise 
hdb3 once it's got a vfat filesystem on it or is there something else I need to 
do, either beforehand or even instead of what I'm thinking of doing?

I'd be very grateful for any advice.


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