Setting up an external hard drive at home to connect to remotely using samba

I am hoping to set up a 1 or 2 TB external hard drive on my home power mac G5 running Leopard, and want to be able to connect to it remotely from my powerbook g4/ macbook air to upload photos and what not when im on the road. A friend suggested setting up samba on the home computer, which is standard in macs and going that route. Im open for any suggestions and help on the best way to do all this. thanks.