Lion + NTFS + External Hard drive = ?

I just got my first Mac, and as expected there has been a bit of a learning curve.

I was trying to access/change files on my external (Seagate FreeAgent) HD and learned pretty quick that I couldn't make any changes, but the drive was functioning normally. Ultimately though, I need to have access to that drive on both my Mac and my work PC, so I sucked it up and installed the Paragon NTFS driver.

The install went fine, no issues what so ever BUT...
Now my MBA wont recognize the FreeAgent drive when it is plugged into the USB. "Finder" shows nothing, Lightroom can't find the pictures for it's catalogue, etc.

I unplugged the drive and booted up my Windows7 Dell and the drive functioned normally, and all the data is intact (thank God).

So... what do I need to do in order to get my MBA to recognize my external hard drive?

Edit: Update- I uninstalled Paragon and the drive worked normally (read only). Anyone know of a bug fix for this?

Copy off all the stuff, reformat to a format both can read natively, move the files back on.

Or if you don't need the PC to read it, just make it OS X (Journaled).

Kaveman- Thanks for your response.

Unfortunately that isn't an option for me. I have 500 gigs of data and nowhere else to store it (hence why I have an external HDD in the first place). There are a lot of elements on the drive that I would need to have access to from both computers.

It seemed like Paragon was going to be a very simple/easy solution to my problem but it doesn't seem like it.

Doing more research I found a lot of other people having the same problem.
The fix was to delete the file /system/library/filesystem/ufsd.fs (and it worked for everyone else).... but my computer doesn't have a ufsd.fs file anywhere on it.

You'd risk your 500 gig of data, playing with a 3rd Party layer writing to a Microsoft Proprietary file format from a Mac. Something goes wrong and the drive could be toast. I couldn't recommend this...

I guess I don't know what my options are:

The main reason I got a Mac in the first place was for the graphic design and video editing advantage (without the headaches of Windows 7).... but I need to be able to easily share this information with my place of employment (PC based). My external hard drive currently acts as my go between from home to work...

I could always use FAT32, but I would run into the 4GB restriction more often than I would like.

I realize there is some risk in using a 3rd party driver to read/write NTFS, but from what I read it has proven to be very reliable and safe.

I guess I have one further question for you:
Is what I am trying to do (use an external HDD to facilitate transfer between PC and Mac) completely out of line with reality? Aside from using Fat32, what other "universal" formats options would I have? And lastly... Should I be looking to return my Mac and suck it up to deal with a windows PC again?