Colin, take a look at owncloud.org. I have no idea if the pogoplug will run it well but it could be an option. It looks bad in my iPhone (scales very badly) but if you are sharing with Windows users they may not notice.

I saw it mentioned on this ALARM thread.
http://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=2023
They also mention OPTWARE too but I don’t know what that is 😉
It couldn’t hurt to ask on the Arch forums.
I suspect there will be lots of config involved (that’s Linux IMO).
I suspect Dropbox or another web based service may cover your needs, if you can wait for it to upload.

If you go the FTP route you can point the server at your main root folder of your external HDD, and then assign different usernames and passwords for each user, or one general user that is allowed multiple simultaneous login-ins. Doing this would allow them to read and write depending on what you set in their permissions.

I have not ever used an FTP server on a MAC, but there are a few open-source softwares that would need to be compiled from the source and run in the terminal.

Let me know if this is what you were looking for.

I have:
-3TB external filled with movies, shows, software, books, etc.

Ideally, I would like to be able to host it in a way that would allow for the following:
-Allow access to browse/download my stuff on my hard drive to my sister, mom, and dad (who live in Cali, NY, and West Virginia respectively). They are not very tech-saavy and they run both Mac and Windows machines collectively.
-Personal access to hard drive remotely so that I can reach my stuff without carrying storage with me.
-I really dont care about being able to remotely change whats on the hard drive, I can do that directly so its more important to me that the files on the hard drive cannot be accidentally modified/deleted by my mom or dad. (Original beef I had with standard pogoplug software.)

Basically, what i picture in my head, is something similar to a private torrent tracker, except obviously instead of torrents it would just be direct download links from my hard drive. Idk if that makes sense at all but it would be great to be able to just give fam and friends an url and user/pass combo that would allow for my hosted hard drive to be accessed through a browser, anywhere that has internet connection.

Clearly I bit off more than I could chew so now I would just be happy with broad advice pointing me in the right direction in terms of what would best accomplish the things listed above. Obviously the less configuration needed on my end, the better, but I am willing to take it on as a project. The people I am trying to share with though would require any process to be relatively simple and straightforward. Thanks again and hope I was more understandable, Im a mechanical engineering major so all this technical coding stuff is pretty foreign to me. =)

I have zero experience using lamp and very little experience with linux so if what I am asking doesn’t completely make sense, that is why. I am basically looking to accomplish the same standard functionality of stock pogo except I couldnt deal with potential consequences of having no control over read/write permissions. I am starting to think I jumped the gun because I have no idea where to start to host my external HD on a web server. Like I said I basically just want my friends and fam to be able to access my media collection, without them having ability to wipe it out remotely.

Is their a relatively easy way for me to do this once I have installed arch linux arm on my pogo? If this is possible in a basic way I think it would be a great resource for everyone that was disappointed in what pogolug really turned out to be. Thanks again for this resource and I will be checking in for any future material you post because this was top notch.