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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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.
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 😭)
but the noise of the platters was not acceptable
Sometimes, being medically deaf is a bonus. LOL
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.
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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.
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
I have used this card for a couple years.
Pros:
- five m.2 sata slots
- single slot pcie, and short / not extending past top of slot
- incredibly cheap
- mine has been reliable
- no extra power needed
- no pcie bifurcation or other special motherboard features required (works in anything)
- the individual drives do show up as individual drives in Debian for me and can be accessed separately (not a hardware raid card)
Cons:
- pcie 3.0x2 speed in an x16 slot (2GBps)
- doesn’t support m.2 pci
- doesn’t support booting from the installed drives
If all you’re looking for is cheap, quiet, storage, and you don’t mind losing out on total read/write speeds, thisll actually do great just about anywhere.
I have a few different makes of these and have been surprised by how big PSU I had to put (versus on-the-wall measured wattage) for them to not occasionally randomly fail and cutting a drive off until reboot. I guess it’s spikes they don’t handle well. Besides that, the cards themselves obviously add some overhead in that department. Something to consider if low-power is a priority.
There has also been one or two drives that just wouldn’t work at all with either card, but were fine in individual slots. Vaguely suspecting drive firmware there.
They do serve their purpose well but just to add some catches for anyone eyeing them. Startech is the brand I had the least glitches with FWIW but keep in mind that’s just one anecdote.
Also ask yourself if you really need PCIe4 because the PCIe3 models are quite a bit cheaper, cooler and more stable.
Oh, and make sure your motherboard supports PCIe bifurcation. Especially for older computers that’s not always a given.
Ah yeah - always a good idea to verify support on the motherboard. I think AMD mbs are usually better on the bifurcation front than Intel ones.
The Startech card I linked is backwards compatible with PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe cards, they mention that they’ve tested with Samsung 970 EVO for example, so you can still fill it up with older, cooler M.2 cards even if it supports PCIe 4.0.
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.
Had a fun one when I put an 8x card forking into two nvme drives in a mobo that I thought compatible. No matter what, only one of them connects. Turned out:
- The 8x slot didn’t bifurcate at all
- The secondary 16x slot could do up to 8x4x4. Which is the same as no bifurcation for an 8x card in that slot.
- GPU only works in the primary slot
You think you think of everything…
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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.
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 :)
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
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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!
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.
I dunno about recommending FreeNAS (Known as truenas now). It is basically an appliance OS, and unless you are using enterprise level hardware, they want nothing to do with you.
I’m currently using it, but it was a very unpleasant experience setting it up.
Set it up on my uGreen DXP4800+
The most unpleasant thing was to configure the LED health indicator and learning how it works.What was unpleasant for you? TrueNAS just works for me and was no hassle at all to setup on my DIY N100 NAS.
Not OP, but at least for me when I tried it:
There was no way to use or even just mount and migrate my existing storage (btrfs+LVM). LVM wasn’t even installed, and when I tried to install it, I got an error saying that
aptwas disabled on the system, which means I was basically locked out of doing anything more than what they allow you to do on your own hardware.It seems like it’s technically open source, but having all the vendor lock-in features and lack of control of a proprietary solution
The only use case seems for it to be used as a black box appliance:
- on a new system
- with empty hard drives
- only with ZFS
- without having any control on your own system, except enabling samba etc and maybe installing the predefined Docker containers that they allow you from the web interface
I knew it is supposed to be only an appliance, but with how much people recommended it, I didn’t thing it would be this closed of a system; I think I’ve read about people doing more things with even just their Synology hardware
Annoyingly, disk discovery. It refused to use my disks, claiming they didn’t have serial numbers. I could see the serial numbers in the frontend and the console, but their middleware just hated them.
I am using a USB multi-disk drive thing, which didn’t work properly on an old kernel, but it should have been fine with the new kernel.
I reported the bug, which didn’t really get addressed, and then had to build my array using the command line tools (which aren’t documented).
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.
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.
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.
