mkfs.ntfs & dodgy usb disks

I have been

1. formatting usb disks with mkfs.ntfs default options
2. Loading several GB of data.
3. Giving them to people to use on M$ windows

The integrity of the NTFS file system doesn't last when used in windows. But windows ones do! These are low mileage usb drives, and in most cases windows is simply reading the data - movies, or installing stuff.

Are the Linux default options OK? I'm talking about 32G partitions, becase I know default numbers may vary with partition size. I pulled hit a number of I/O errors (which usually announce poor hardware) in one yesterday. Windows 'chkdsk /f' wasn't encouraging. So I remade the filesystem, and tested it with 'badblocks -s'. Not one error. I'm going to format another in windows, and see how we do. Any other suggestions?