VMware Workstation 7 - Guidance on attaching external USB disks

Hello folks

I am not sure if I am posting in the correct group! My question concerns the following:

1. I built a virtual Linux environment in VMware Workstation 7 which works fine.
   
2. I want to attach an external USB disk
   
3. Is it best to format the external USB disk as a NTFS file system and then access the disk drive using shared folders or is it better to use the Linux environment and create a partition, ext3 file system etc. I want to understand which is the most effective way of using the external USB disk and how to achieve the fastest possible disk access etc?
   

Regards

Simon Glass