Rather than post with my problems I thought I would say thanks to all those responsible for producing openSUSE.
Having tried over ten different Linux distros, openSUSE is the first one I have found that actually works for sharing NTFS partitions over Samba.
Also thanks to Knurpt & swerdna who helped me with the only minor issue I had with this setup over on this thread:
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/network-internet/474450-samba-setup-error-unable-find-suitable-server-domain-domainname.html
Cheers,
Nick