[Samba] Newbie - sharing b/w OSX, Windows & Linux

[Shriram Ramanathan]

Hi,

I am trying to upgrade my home backup system.  So, I was considering one of those network router devices into which you can plug in USB external hard drives so that they function as network drives.  Now, I have 3 computers - 1 with Vista, 1 OSX and linux and I wanted to backup all of them over the network on the same external drive.  

(1) Can I use Samba in such a situation with a single ext3 FS on the external drives ?

(2) Do I need to connect the external drive to a linux box on which I run Samba ?  Or is it possible to do some kind of firmware install of Samba on the external drive itself (I did read somewhere that there are some ethernet drives available with Samba installed as firmware).  That way I can plug in my external drives directly into the router.

(3) Finally, do I have to install some versions of Samba on both the Vista and the OSX computers
 so that they can see the Samba exported external network drive ?  If so, are there binaries available for OSX & Vista or do I have to do a cygwin install ?

Since I am new to Samba, any additional comments are also welcome.