External Harddrive options

Hey everyone,

I recently purchased a macbook pro (the october 2011 model), but since all my vst's and such are for PC, I'm running ableton live 8 on my Bootcamp (windows) partition, when it comes to producing music.
I think I'll continue to do this for a while as I'm not having any problems, and I really can't be bothered changing everything to mac, and there are many plugins I use which are only compatible to windows.

So now I want to get an external hard drive that I can constantly leave connected whether I'm in bootcamp or mac.
On this hard drive I want to keep all my samples, and sample libraries for applications such as Kontakt and Nexus, but also all my music that I'll play in iTunes.
So I want to be able to produce adequately with all of my orchestral sample libraries and such while in bootcamp, listen to iTunes etc, and while on mac I mainly just want it connected so that I can listen to the same iTunes library. If possible I want to be able to write from my mac partition as well.

Ideally I want USB3.0, or at the very least firewire speed connection, because I think that with USB2.0 the data transfer won't be fast enough for when producing using Kontakt and such, but my mbp is not fitted with a usb3.0 port.
What options do I have here?

Also is it possible to sync the same group of music files on an external hard drive to my iTunes on my windows partition, and the iTunes on my mac partition?

I know there are complications with access/reading/writing files from a mac/pc to a pc/mac formatted external hard drive, and I have heard there are several different methods around this.

Given all my requirements and what I want to do with my mbp and external hard drive, can anyone give me any recommendations?
I'm sorry this post is so convoluted and hard to understand, but it would be greatly appreciated if anyone can give me any advice,

Thank you in advance!

 

Okay, so here are some options I have:

1. Buy a portable hard drive such as the new buffalo one which has thunderbolt and usb 3.0, and is supposedly compatible with mac and windows. It comes formatted as HFS+, but can be reformatted to NTFS.
So, I can buy that, reformat it as NTFS, and use it through the thunderbolt connection while on bootcamp (my mbp does not have usb 3.0), and then get NTFS 3g for when I'm using OSX.
The downsides of this one is that it is really expensive, and I'm unfamiliar with reformatting hard drives. How complex/risky is it to do this? (sorry, I have no idea)

2. Buy a portable hard drive formatted for windows, and connect it via USB2.0.

It's cheap, but I don't think the transfer rates will be sufficient when using applications such as kontakt (sampler).

3. Buy a portable hard drive formatted for windows and somehow connect it via USB3.0. Get NTFS 3g for use with OSX.
I have a late 2011 model macbookpro, but is there any way to connect a USB3.0 device to this?

Also, how is NTFS 3g? does it affect the transfer speed, is it stable etc?

Thank you~