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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An M.2 PCIe card can make most old computers into a good SSD NAS.
https://www.startech.com/en-eu/hdd/quad-m2-pcie-card-b
Worth noting that cards such as this (with mote than one M.2 slot) require the mainboard to support PCIe bifurcation – which most old boards likely do not.
Edit: Cards with just one slot do not require this feature so you can plug them into any board that has a free PCIe slot. Unless you also want to boot from them, in which case you might need to modify your UEFI. I went that route and succeeded, but be aware of the risks involved.
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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.
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.
They use a lot less power too. For small home NAS they are really an often overlooked option.
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.
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.
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.
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.
but the noise of the platters was not acceptable
Sometimes, being medically deaf is a bonus. LOL
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 :)
