A system and method for associating a network address with a volume, individual disk or collection of disks in a network storage system. Identifying information is stored on each volume or disk so that a file server can map a network address to a MAC address associated with a particular network interface controller of a file server. Input/output operations directed to the network address associated with a particular volume or disk is directed to the file server that is currently managing that volume or disk. In a system utilizing these address associated volumes, the name and address of data does not change as different file servers manage a particular volume or disk.