Accessing NTFS partition from Linux

I've noticed that I can access the Windows NTFS partition from Ubuntu. Is it safe to read files on the Windows partition? Is it safe to write to there from the Linux side? If so, this would greatly reduce duplication of files. I have a lot of documentation in PDF format that I need to refer to.

 

Reading is safe.

 

Am I correct to infer that writing is not?

 

It think you can write on it too. I do that all the time..

 

You may infer that I don't know
For quite some time writing simply was not possible.
Things may have changed (see http://www.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php), but I haven't evaluated this yet.
Usually I use FAT32 partitions for shared data to avoid the user rights hassle.

 

Reading is fine with both the old NTFS fs driver in Linux, as well as with the NTFS-3G driver.
Writing is shady with the old NTFS fs driver in Linux, but quite stable with the ntfs-3g driver.

If you use ntfs-3g to mount NTFS partitions, you should have no problems in writing as well.

man ntfs-3g for further info.