I think I may have found a good solution here: [url]http://www.howtoforge.com/creating-an-nfs-like-standalone-storage-server-with-glusterfs-on-ubuntu-9.10[/url]

Creating An NFS-Like Standalone Storage Server With GlusterFS On Ubuntu 9.10

This tutorial shows how to set up a standalone storage server on Ubuntu 9.10. Instead of NFS, I will use GlusterFS here. The client system will be able to access the storage as if it was a local filesystem. GlusterFS is a clustered file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. Storage bricks can be made of any commodity hardware such as x86_64 servers with SATA-II RAID and Infiniband HBA.

I think VSFTPD is a easier option you can install and configure the software in no time no complicated setup and the protocol is supported by all OS'es. check this link http://vsftpd.beasts.org/

I use Debian with samba (takes about 30 seconds after installation to setup with a simple config) to share my 1.7tb media drive, archive, web drives etc with my XP-based PCs.

Debian might be overkill for you if you only want to file share, but I use Apache2/MySQL/PHP for web development, use it as a print server, upnp media server to my PS3, game server, teamspeak server, backup device, mail server (with webmail, anti-virus and spam filter), etc etc etc. My initial need was the same as you, but once I started I just kept finding new roles!

Joe