I used to use ntfs quite a bit on a RedHat 7.1 install.  Seemed to
read the disk just fine.  I was never brave enough to try to write it.

But what version of NTFS are you trying to read?  I'm pretty sure that
the ntfs mounter that comes with Linux doesn't yet read NTFS 5.0 (the
one that's on Windows 2000, and which is probably on XP).  Could that
be your problem?

R