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You could try Pogo Plug's Private Cloud, a $50 box you can plug a USB hard drive into and use as your own 'private' cloud. There is sync/streaming/backup software for Andriod and iDevices and backup/management software for Windows and Mac.

//also the PogoPlug is a small linux box that can be modified to do whatever you want.

Plus, the more you distribute the data, the more backups you have. I'd hate to loose gigabytes of family photos to a single hard drive failing. There are a few companies, like pogoplug, producing consumer friendly storage devices that are inexpensive ($20) and hide all the complex software pieces behind a nice web interface.

Also, I plan on making a slashdot-inspired site. The website will be called "Pipedot" and be reachable at pipedot.org or pipedot.com. The motto will be "News for nerds, without the corporate slant." Get it? A pipe character looks like a slash without the slant!

I'm committed to providing a free and independent resource without the influence of a parent corporate overlord. The site will be decidedly non-profit and have zero advertisements, zero adobe flash, zero google analytics, etc...

As a special bonus, the site can now be reached at fuckbeta.org! Stay tuned for more updates...

Pogoplug

Not sure how open it is, but I can access my HDD on my plug anywhere, $25 for the hardware & $0 for the service.

"I don't get it."

That much is obvious.

To the OP, i think you're looking for something like this: http://pogoplug.com/

I have a 500 GB USB HDD plugged to a pogoplug at home, and have put another one pogoplug+hdd at a friend's house. I backup my macbook pro using arsync over aftp, my linux boxes using rsync over ssh, and my wife copies files from her win7 manually (she only has punctually a few stuff she wants to save) using windows shares because i added samba to my pogoplug (it's a linux and they give you root access). Then, the pogoplug software automagically mirrors my home's pogoplug to the one at my friend's. So there you have local daily backups and automatic off-site backups for 300$ (100$ for 2 pogoplugs, 200$ for these HDDs when i bought them; you'd get one TB each now i guess). And I can access my files using a web interface from anywhere, and give web links to any file i want for friends to download stuff. Cheap, convenient, multiplatform, reliable, you have total control. What else?

A friend of mine brought this to my attention since I have recently been in a similar situation. I've resolved my situation by using fuse+pogoplugfs (available from Pogoplug) with 1TB of online storage for ~$60/mo. The downside is that though the storage problem has been solved, the you would be using your allocated bandwidth to your server which could get spendy on overages. I've looked at other options such as Amazon S3 which is very robust and I believe it even offers object "versioning". My hosting provider, Softlayer also has a Cloud Object Storage solution that looks like a good contender (more info). Anyways, these are solutions I've reviewed and thought I would share them in brief with you.

For something simple that you maintain, you can just setup rsync and a couple remote boxes and go from there.

I use Backblaze for personal offsite backup. It fit my current needs by allowing backup of usb drives and being native (and not sucking up resources).
downsides:

• dependency on third-party for storage
• small monthly fee
• restoring large amounts of data suck
• initial seed of data can suck

upsides:

• no server side maintenance for me
• keeps old versions around
• support has been good the few times I've used it

I would like to set up a PogoPlug at my parent's house.

The other products I've tried (Wuala, SpiderOak, Carbonite, Crashplan, Jungle Disk) just didn't fit my needs or taste, but try them yourself.

Wikipedia also has a page

The Pogoplug website has a page of the latest tweets featuring their name. The latest flood of tweets are people linking to the story. They don't seem to be linking to DeviceGuru, though. They're linking here. If you REALLY want to tell people how bad it is, and have it display on their website, Twitter is your friend... (just sayin')

Neat little device, creates a tunnel so you don't have to fiddle with ports on your router with an account that is included in $99 purchase price. http://www.pogoplug.com/

Pogo Plug is a commercialized Sheeva Plug. It may be easier to buy.
http://www.pogoplug.com/

Sheeva/Pogo is the best solution to this problem that I am aware of. 5W and $99.

At $100, they should have a "BUY IT NOW" button on their site. They missed at least one quick sale from an impulse buyer here.

The link to buy it was right there in the summary and has a big magenta button on the first page that says "BUY NOW $99".

And I also couldn't help but notice that Marvell's page for the device has a big clickable image on it that says "VISIT PARTNER PAGE TO BUY."

You can beat this with an array of Pogoplugs at $99 each. They draw under 5W and have 512MB RAM, 512MB flash and GbE. Stick a 64GB USB stick into it. They about about 3in square.

Pogoplug is same thing as a Marvell SheevaPlug.

Obligatory EE Times link with a slightly different emphasis..
http://eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=214502566
which has a link to another implementation (for remote USB access) available for pre-order at $ 79
http://pogoplug.com/