>If you know the IP address you could ping that with a short timeout. Wouldn't confirm that the drive was ready but....
>

using System.Net.NetworkInformation;
>PingReply response  = new Ping().Send("100.100.100.100", 5);
>bool worked = response.Status == IPStatus.Success;

5ms was more than enough on my network,

Thanks, I might add such a method in my DriveInformation() class to benefit of such approach.