Network drive taht does simply connect via IP

Question

If wrong forum or question too specific I apologize in advance.

In my time I have made use of different network drives, which only purpose is to share files between computers in my household.

I have had my difficulties make them do as they should, but the last one takes the price: WD MyCloud home, where I need to log on to an account at WD to make the drive appear in my explorer at all. This works from time to time, but never always.

I am looking for (and I seriously doubt I can be the only one) for a 4TB drive that does just appear after mapping it, can be seen in explorer and act like a normal drive, and very important: Stop spinning after some idle time.

To this day I have found nothing of the like. Somehow these specifications never appears in the descriptions of the device.

I write her in the sincere hope that a thing like that exist. Does anyone in here know of something that can do this?

I would very much appreciate it.

Answer 1

You could configure your own using Unraid or Truenas. If you have an old desktop lying around you can repurpose it to be a NAS. If you don't have an old desktop, try checking at some electronic recyclers. You can typically get an old optiplex that would be plenty fast for this for under $100. This is the tutorial I followed to get mine set up. Once you follow that tutorial, your NAS should work just like you asked in your initial post.