Vista VPN/ Shared drive over net

Hi,

My basic need is to share some files over the internet, accessed by my family, size limits of some services make it impractical or expensive.


I have a lacie drive 1TB, which I know I can share over the internet, but not sure how this works exactly, but its not necessarily an issue of getting just the drive, but securely etc.

For example if I am connected to my network I can use the UPNP function and have access to my media files, but have to be connected to my network for this.


So I have ipad and a note 2, want my music available and some other files,
my family between them have phones, ipad, and windows pcs due the distance we live apart need to share files, but rather than emailing, or instant messaging to send individual files it be good if they have access to parts of my hard drive over the internet, but want top do this as securly as possible.


So I can Map Parts of the hard drive to common family files, then to specific family members files giving them there own accessible hard drive.


so:

mapped drives, so parents could access family, and parents drive, sister can access sister and family Drive, and I can access all as the admin

F(family):\
S(sister):\
P(parents):\
etc

Ideas and instruction on how to create would be grateful, just spent a few days trying to create vpn but doing something wrong and I suspect this is because I don't understand it.


Thanks for taking the time to read

Wayne