Setup for Lin rsnap serving 4 winxp boxes

I've run a few backups from linux where the Source was a windows xp
box.  I don't recall the issues involved.  I think mainly I hit some
problem once where everthing was re-downloaded due to some dating snafu
between linux and windows.

But cutting to the chase, I need somekind of backup server for 3 WinXP
boxes that are mostly devoted to video and graphic editing of various
kinds.  These will be large files but also many normal sized files as
well.

I've spent this week testing different Windows backup solutions and
none seemed to offer the networking flexability and what might be
called auto versioning of rsnapshot/rsync.

The one thing I noticed that seemed more built in was that some kind
of compression can be toggled as part of most windows backup schemes.

I'm planning to try using rsnapshot with backup source on winxp boxes
and backup destination on linux disc.  Or maybe flowing over onto usb
storage. 

I'd like to hear about known problems with such a setup.

A few things come to mind like if using Reiserfs or ext3 for backup
destination has problems.  Remembering that the winxp machines will
need to browse the backups and versions often to retrieve past work or
whatever.

I haven't noticed any problems browsing linux formatted discs from a
winxp box but haven't really done it extensively.

I wondered if maybe the backup disk should be ntfs to avoid some file
system related problems but that introduces big problems for hardlinks
and symlinks I think.

All win machines are NTFS formated and I've had no problems mounting
or writing to them with cifs from my linux desktop machine.

One stickler here is that I'll need to have a test before the backup
runs to see if a working mount is in place.  I can script that of
course with a wrapper but wondered if rsnapshot has builtin provision
for running programs before or after backup is run.

I guess the same question would apply if I wanted to use somekind of
compression. 



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