Networked Harddrive - no prop soft?

Hi

I know there are external hard drive "solutions" that plug into a network
through ethernet or wireless, etc, but I've noticed there's always
proprietary software involved in formatting the disk or installing an app to
get the thing working from other machines on the network.

So, I would love to know if there's any product on the market whose hardware
simply connects to a wired network, where you don't have to pre-format or
re-format the drive and you don't have to install any further software at
all.

I would then have to discover which dynamic ip address the drive has picked
up by scanning the network, and then map a drive to that ip. I couldn't give
a two hoots about permissions or security considerations in the solution.

Does this amazing gadget exist already (I'm in the UK)?

nospam@invalid.invalid wrote:
> Hi
>
> I know there are external hard drive "solutions" that plug into a network
> through ethernet or wireless, etc, but I've noticed there's always
> proprietary software involved in formatting the disk or installing an app to
> get the thing working from other machines on the network.
>
> So, I would love to know if there's any product on the market whose hardware
> simply connects to a wired network, where you don't have to pre-format or
> re-format the drive and you don't have to install any further software at
> all.
>
> I would then have to discover which dynamic ip address the drive has picked
> up by scanning the network, and then map a drive to that ip. I couldn't give
> a two hoots about permissions or security considerations in the solution.
>
> Does this amazing gadget exist already (I'm in the UK)?
>
>

There are NAS reviews here. Happy hunting :-)

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/nas/

Paul