Hey there selfhosted community.
Does anyone here have experience with silent or mostly silent storage solutions? I would like to implement a NAS solution for my homelab and home.
I tried a fully fledged consumer NAS (QNAP with Seagate 12 TB NAS drives) but the noise of the platters was not acceptable. Currently I have a external WD drive attached via USB to my mini PC/server but I would really love to implement some kind of redundancy in the form of a NAS from where the critical files would be backed up to Hetzner for offsite and on external drives.
I don’t need a ton of space. My most critical items are photos. As silent operation is very important I started looking into ssd NAS solutions. Does anyone have experience with Beelink ME mini? Other solutions I looked into where either overkill or horrendously expensive.
I would really like to pull the trigger on a solution here before the prices for storage will skyrocket in the future.
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I tried a fully fledged consumer NAS (QNAP with Seagate 12 TB NAS drives) but the noise of the platters was not acceptable.
If you have a NAS, then you can put it as far away as your network reaches. Just put it somewhere where you can’t hear the thing.
Yeah I would do that if I could but unfortunately we would hear the thing regardless of where I would set it up in the flat.
I realize you’re looking for new toys, but ‘anywhere in the flat’ includes ‘under a pile of pillows.’ Otherwise, for personal photo-sized storage, just put a couple 2.5mm format SSDs in the QNAP.
Okay, this is unfortunately DIY, but if you’re willing to spend time:
Get a plywood box and put it in there.
If you hear vibrations, put sorbothane between the NAS and the box.
If you need more sound absorption, put acoustic foam on the inside.
If you need more cooling, drill two holes, mount a case fan, and run the air through some kind of baffle. Like, maybe attach insulated flex-duct, like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Hon-Guan-Silencer-Reducer-Ventilation/dp/B07HC8CXQG
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters LVM (Linux) Logical Volume Manager for filesystem mapping NAS Network-Attached Storage NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express PSU Power Supply Unit Plex Brand of media server package RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SMB Server Message Block protocol for file and printer sharing; Windows-native SSD Solid State Drive mass storage ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
11 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 21 acronyms.
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There are plenty of NAS systems that use M.2 SSDs. Those should be pretty much silent. You might even have to sell only one kidney to afford the drives.
Meh, you got a spare kidney…
I already used that to get my GPU.
I repeat myself but check out Odroid H4+.
4 SATA ports and if you split one m2 port you can also put 3 pcie3 nvme (you could split one port up to 4 but just one lane per drive is bit sad).
Same idea as the rotating miniPCs on Ali except you actually have a shot at BIOS upgrades and not as dodgy supply chain.
https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h4-plus/
If you put BIOS in power efficiency mode it can run fanless as long as the ambient temperature isn’t balming.
If it’s really just for NAS this is still more than you really need. You could get away a lot cheaper and leaner with something like the ARM-based HC4.
https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc4/
Or check out Jeff Geerlings PiNAS shenanigans.
The Beelink looks all right. Personally I prefer the flexibility of non-soldered RAM but I guess it’s mainly a question of how much of an out-of-box experience you are looking for.
Seeed Studio reServer is also nice, though that’s on the beefier and pricier side.
The H4 plus honnestly looks great. I do have a 3d printer so an custom NAS enclosure would be easy to manufacture. And 4 SATA ports for ssd should be more than enough. Thank you!
Have you tried a non-tech solution, like putting the drives into some noise absorbing materials, or isolating the sound with the hard case, things like that? That may sound not really obvious, but my guess is that you can at least get some noise off with a solution like this.
I won’t go with SSDs for a NAS as it’s very expensive. But if money of no concern, that Beelink thing looks impressive.
Regarding NAS loudness volume: I can give you some advice as mine is in my bedroom.
Choose quiet drives. I deployed 4x Toshiba N300 15TB He HDDsin RaidZ2
Maybe mod the drive cages: Use something like sticly velcro strips (soft side) on all sides that HDD/caddies touch the caddy and case/chassie.
Move your intensive access times to late night (4am for example) or when you are at work/gone from home.
Use a soft surface. I have placed the NAS on soft foam from packing materials to reduce vibrations.Happy storing :)
Probably a fine buy, you can get m.2s for it and it should be silent at idle. With the level of silence you want, you’re gonna have to do some sort of low power mini PC & ssds.
A quick caution, don’t cheap out on your ssds! The cheap ones are low quality and have high premature failure rates (ask me how i know 😭)
As others said, spin down the drives when they’re not in use. Make sure power saving is enabled on the drives and tune them to spin down after some appropriate amount of time. (hdparm lets you customize it on Linux)
Consider also sleeping the NAS when not in use. You can try using Wake-on-LAN to remotely wake it up when you need to use it. Saves on electricity and heat! You could also sleep it on a schedule, in case you need to be online for backups to run at particular times.
but the noise of the platters was not acceptable
Sometimes, being medically deaf is a bonus. LOL
Usually 2.5" hdd tends to be more silent. But they are definitely worse from a nas perspective and not so in the ratio €/gb.
The solution with non mechanical disks is by far the most silent, but prepare the wallet and probably a kidney too.
They use a lot less power too. For small home NAS they are really an often overlooked option.
Don’t use them.
Very easy to pick SMR HDDs by accident.
You don’t want those inside a NAS.That depends on the usage, see: https://www.xda-developers.com/smr-hdds-are-fine-for-your-nas-until-you-try-to-resilver/
If you keep this issue in mind and avoid resilvering / balancing they can work just fine in a media storage NAS.
Too dangerous for me.
Too much room for error.
Fine, I write an extensive bit of help with links to QNAP docs and a few other things, and you downvote.
Fine, how about I just delete it, and ya all go figure it out without my help.
I’d DIY it (maybe with FreeNAS, about which I know nothing) instead of buying a proprietary NAS in a box. What’s the point of self-hosting if you’re going to be at the mercy of someone else’s software anyway? If you’re DIY’ing, there are 3.5" drive enclosures with soundproofing stuff in them that should keep the drive pretty quiet. Or if you can afford enough SSD’s for your storage requirements, then use those.
My setup is an old Dell Wyse thin client and 4 external USB drives. The thin client is basically silent. The drives only make sound when they’re active, and spin down when idle. The thin client has an Intel CPU with QuickSync so it can even transcode with Plex. For data redundancy between the hard drives, I use lsyncd to make a poor man’s mirror setup.
Works great. Lives in a cabinet in my living room.
