good to know that you were able to appreciate this distro, just like i did, primarily because im an ubuntu user.
mandriva? i guess never for me. it's a linux distro that practices "turncoatism". (sorry for those who loves mandriva).
and for NTFS file format control, just install NTFS-3g. it's in the synaptics. it should be able to do you good with your NTFS partition/s.