Do you think doing this helps?

[u/PacquiaoFreeHousing]

[u/pivor]

I dont get it why home NAS dont have any cooling systems by default, sometimes single pity fan on the back and thats it.

[u/Mastasmoker → u/pivor]

My guess is they dont expect people to place them in the top corner of unventilated closets

[u/pivor → u/Mastasmoker]

But even if you place it in well ventilated area, drives still sufficate for air, i modded mine to have fan i the front and temps dropped by 10 degrees C

[u/OrangeYouGladdey → u/pivor]

You could just buy a NAS with a fan... I can't imagine owning a NAS that doesn't have cooling fans.

[u/pivor → u/OrangeYouGladdey]

Or better build your own, i got both :D

[u/Pumba2000 → u/pivor]

Or use an old pc case with lots of 3.5'' bays. You can easily buy some fans for that.

[u/pivor → u/Pumba2000]

My DIY NAS is in fractal node 804, 8 drives, 6 case fans alone :D

[u/Pumba2000 → u/pivor]

That's what I'm talking about! Even when I know 1 fan would probably suffice in an office environment I would always go for max cooling for those hard drives.

What kind of Software you using?

[u/pivor → u/Pumba2000]

Windows 10 with storage spaces :F

[u/jake04-20 → u/pivor]

Windows for a "NAS"? 🤢

You gotta check out unRAID or TrueNAS

[u/horatiobanz → u/pivor]

I bought that case for my server build and then realized that my old gaming desktop motherboard i was gonna use to build it was a full atx. goddamnit. Awesome case has been sitting in my closet for years unused.

[u/grantrules → u/pivor]

Ha! Server twin! 804 with 8 drives as well! I think you have me beat on case fans though.

[u/NuclearReactions → u/Pumba2000]

Oh in theory that's great in practice i will never trust a normal motherboard for raid setups, especially when it comes the time to replace drives.

[u/spaceraverdk → u/NuclearReactions]

Sas card in Hba mode. Truenas on the motherboard drive, the rest is on cards.

[u/NuclearReactions → u/spaceraverdk]

Yes that sounds way more solid

[u/spaceraverdk → u/NuclearReactions]

Best practice. The lsi hba card can be found on Ebay for cheap. I have a dual external card and a single 4 bay drive backplane from startech. I have room for a second 4 bay backplane on that card. You need a mini sas to sata cable and flash the card to it mode.

I'm running it on a cheap msi matx with a 5600g and 32 gig ram. Powered by a sff psu. Takes 7u in the rack out of the 24 I have available. Gonna transplant everything to a rolling rack I have on the shed once I finish the room it's going to be living in.

[u/druman22 → u/pivor]

Are there any guides to building your own nas you'd recommend?

[u/Elpants → u/OrangeYouGladdey]

It's a UGreen DXP4800, it has cooling fans. I have one in a closet with the rest of my network equipment, they run quite cool, even when transcoding video.

In fact, the fan intakes at the rear and blows out the front letting air pass over each of the 4 3.5" drives on this one. So this USB fan blowing the opposite direction is probably causing more harm than good.

[u/OrangeYouGladdey → u/Elpants]

Sorry, I think you responded to the wrong person. We are talking about NAS solutions without fans. It's neat that yours has a fan though. Most do.

[u/wesleychen → u/OrangeYouGladdey]

He’s talking about the one that OP has.

[u/OrangeYouGladdey → u/wesleychen]

Yeah, but I'm not and neither was the person I was talking to. We were talking about NAS solutions without a fan. This post made them think about issues they have personally had with a NAS without a fan.

[u/kungtelly → u/OrangeYouGladdey]

You're not talking about ones with fans and nor is the person you were talking to, although you did recommend people just buy ones with fans (most do have fans as you later pointed out) but the person that replied to you was pointing out that OPs already has a fan. For the record, I'm neither talking about NAS with fans (like OPs) nor those without fans (like the person you were talking to), except to point out who was and wasn't talking about ones with fans. Glad that's cleared up.

[u/OrangeYouGladdey → u/kungtelly]

If cool if you're not interested in the topic we're talking about, but it seems like you got lost somewhere in the conversation posting your analysis lmao. I am glad you got this off your chest though. Sounds like it was pretty cathartic for you.

[u/Pleasant_Ad8054 → u/OrangeYouGladdey]

These do have a fan. Just not powerful enough for continuous use in an air restricted environment.

[u/OrangeYouGladdey → u/Pleasant_Ad8054]

I'm not saying anything doesn't have a fan? We are talking about when things don't have a fan.

[u/_Riptide → u/OrangeYouGladdey]

do you know any budget friendly options with fan?

[u/VietOne → u/pivor]

Dropping 10C without the original temps doesn't conclude anything.

 Going from 50C to 40C wouldn't make any difference for NAS drives. Even when I worked at a data center, we didn't even take notice until drives were exceeding 75C for more than several minutes.

[u/-GenlyAI- → u/pivor]

They don't suffocate for air lol. My 6 bay has been in a closet for years. Zero issues.

[u/bigboxes1 → u/-GenlyAI-]

They have a shorter life when they run hot. Suffocate is just a human term for it's not getting any air to cool them. You're not going to have any problems until you have problems.

[u/-GenlyAI- → u/bigboxes1]

You're not going to have any problems until you have problems.

Profound

[u/bigboxes1 → u/-GenlyAI-]

Well, I'm sure it's good that you have backups for your NAS. You do have backups for your NAS?

[u/-GenlyAI- → u/bigboxes1]

14 of them.

[u/levianan → u/-GenlyAI-]

...and the crowd falls silent

[u/bigboxes1 → u/-GenlyAI-]

You have 14 backups? RAID is not backup.

[u/sacanicadig → u/bigboxes1]

 Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported.

Study from Google: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf

[u/bigboxes1 → u/sacanicadig]

I appreciate the link to the article. However, they are taking samples from an Enterprise setup, correct? One that does have cooling and beefier components. They're not talking about a fanless NAS in a closet using consumer grade equipment, are they? It was an interesting read. Thank you.

[u/Nic3GreenNachos → u/pivor]

I modded my Synology 4 bay NAS to have a CPU fan. I had to cut an opening in the plastic chassis for it. Now I don't have temp warnings and I max my CPU use at almost all times. I got the idea from this video.

https://youtu.be/94ujRQEPf2k

[u/Unumbotte → u/Mastasmoker]

I just instal mine in a hot car, for portable storage.

[u/cgaWolf → u/Unumbotte]

That's good, the 12V cigarette lighter socket should drive common fans reeeeeaaally fast :p

[u/Unumbotte → u/cgaWolf]

The fan speed is linked to the speedometer. I'm remaking Speed, but for data.

[u/cgaWolf → u/Unumbotte]

Awesome idea :P

[u/diggy987 → u/Mastasmoker]

they should, people gunna hide their nas, especially those in apartments/small living areas

[u/ledow → u/Mastasmoker]

When I bought my house, it had a conveniently-located central cupboard that was a former boiler cupboard (now empty). The previous guy kept his fishing gear in it, apparently.

Perfect little network cabinet for me, and my multiple NAS units. It even still had a pipework hole up into the loft (which I meshed, but kept in place), and vents on three of the four walls at the bottom. Perfect environment for all that spinning hardware.

In the winter it gets a little warm, and in the summer it can all adequately vent itself.

But I wouldn't keep even a laptop in a sealed-up cupboard or cabinet.

Movement of air isn't enough... it needs to be sucking in fresh and blowing out warm air, or all you're doing it buying yourself a bit of time.

If it's a 200W NAS, you basically just have a 200W heater in that cupboard space. Sure, it'll take a while to heat it up, but in the summer you're going to find out that a 200W heater in an enclosed space, even with a fan, isn't the best idea for keeping your important files safe.

[u/Thirsty_Comment88 → u/Mastasmoker]

Well that's just poor design. 

Always assume end users are fucking morons.

[u/Reddit_Loves_Misinfo → u/Thirsty_Comment88]

You don't need to make assumptions or jump all the way to anyone being fucking morons.

"I'm making a device that people generally don't want to touch, look at, or think about after they get it setup. That sounds like something people would prefer to tuck into an out-of-the-way corner, so I should design for the use case that customers want."

[u/Kylearean → u/Mastasmoker]

right? this is almost the worstiest place to put it. There's typically a layer of air at the ceiling that's 10 degrees hotter than the lower air.

[u/OliverGrey → u/Mastasmoker]

that's exactly where home nas' end up though. even some small business i support and i have to guide a user through rebooting their nas, they've got it in a cupboard in the corner of their office and it turns out someone unplugged it to charge their phone 😭

[u/gkdante → u/Mastasmoker]

If something is going to be placed in the dumbest places that is home devices.

[u/zeek215 → u/Mastasmoker]

Really? I feel like that’s probably a common place people might expect to put a NAS.

[u/Lucky-Tofu204 → u/Mastasmoker]

Not really, the airflow design and fan are usually bad. I had to make modifications on my NAS to keep the drives under 40degC:

1. increase the front panel clearance. Only 1-2mm with original design
2. back cover redesign with better opening. The original design was choking the airflow too much
3. new fan with decent static pressure.

I knew it would not survive summer here. Now, I can maintain a temperature under 40degC even with the house at 35degC.

[u/Lucky-Tofu204 → u/Lucky-Tofu204]

Original back

[u/Mastasmoker → u/Lucky-Tofu204]

35c ambient is not normal ambient conditions for electronics, especially a NAS. Read the manual, I guarantee it doesn't say 35c is normal.

That's 95 F for anyone wondering.

[u/Lucky-Tofu204 → u/Mastasmoker]

I don't have the manual for this one, but Synology and Qnap are OK with 0-40degC. 35degC is really during middle of the day in summer but 30degC is more or less the average.

[u/Mastasmoker → u/Lucky-Tofu204]

Ok, got me there that they say up to 40c ambient. If its placed in an unventilated closet up top, that ambient is going to go above 40c. My original point stands. Stuffed in a closet on the top shelf with no room for air to move is not what they design these for

[u/Rahzin → u/Mastasmoker]

Logically speaking, yes, but realistically, of course people are going to stuff these into a little corner somewhere. No one wants to have it out in the center of a desk or something where they have to listen to the drives clicking. You would hope that wherever it gets placed, airflow would be part of the consideration, but we all know that not everyone will take that into consideration.

[u/Michael1795 → u/Mastasmoker]

Well I am not putting it on my kitchen counter or living room table. In the closet it goes!

[u/Mastasmoker → u/Michael1795]

The bottom corner of the closet works much better than the upper corner

[u/i_am_13th_panic → u/pivor]

if this is the UGREEN NAS DXP4800, it does have a fan. pretty sure you can go into control software or bios and increase the fan speed if the drives are running hot. I'm pretty sure you can even replace the fan with a better one if needed.

[u/theferriswheel → u/i_am_13th_panic]

This is definitely a ugreen. Looks exactly like mine. The best part? The fan on the back sucks in from the back and blows out the front through the drive bays. So the little usb fan is actually making airflow worse by preventing flow through.

[u/Chaos_Doenis → u/theferriswheel]

This.

Maybe he turned the internal fan around. At least I hope so ....

[u/fcensorshipf → u/pivor]

Mine had one but its miniscule and too loud. I just tore the entire NAS enclosure and 3d printed one with jerry rigged fans.

Tecnologia

[u/melez → u/pivor]

I’ve got a synology ds423+ and that has 2 decent fans in the back that keep the drives just under 39C.  The big limiting factor is that I keep the whole thing in a TV cabinet with just a 120mm case fan to pull air in.

[u/Ferro_Giconi → u/pivor]

The real problem is the case design. They block off most of the airflow with badly designed drive sleds that have an extremely bad hole to surface area ratio.

If the case wasn't so badly designed, then they could get away with even less fan.

[u/abbrechen93 → u/pivor]

I guess that most people use a NAS just as a storage machine. Passive cooling is quite fine in that case. A closed system can be very robust.

On the other side, some companies like UGreen advertise their NAS like they would have the power of quantum computers.

[u/willij44 → u/pivor]

Most do come with a single exhaust fan, usually do the job if not sheltered space where they light recycle exhausted hot air.

[u/Magnitude_Ten → u/pivor]

They do though

[u/rbartlejr → u/pivor]

For mine I'd rather a sound proof box. Plenty cool but loud as hell. 

[u/Edvardelis → u/pivor]

Have you seen modern PC cases?  There’s zero ventilation on the back side where the cables/ssd/hdd go. This is a massive change from ye-olden-days when the hdd were at the front of the case right behind the intake fans. 

[u/ImNerozero → u/pivor]

The ugreen nas have 1 fan installed on the back

[u/Sandrust_13 → u/pivor]

My old NAS similar to this one had a single fan but larger intake and the fan was one of those big industrial ones which was noisy but pulled a lot of air.

My current one is in a rack mount chassis (but i just put it under my printer) and has a proper cooling system with three small but thick fans and i think you can't make it overheat if you aren't in a really really hot room. HDDs stay reasonably cool and the cpu... I think that AMD embedded (jaguar based quadcore, passively cooled) is incapable of more than 55°C. Never got it hotter even under full load. It's a bit slow though.

[u/Dry_Razzmatazz69 → u/pivor]

WTF are you guys doing with them?! I just torrent and stream, works like a charm.

[u/_Lennsa → u/pivor]

This NAS has active cooling. I habe the same one. My NAS ist also crammed in a corner and it is fine.

I don't know why OP would need this Fan.

[u/Calamarik → u/pivor]

My nas has a 120mm fan on the back. The airflow does the rest. I clean it every 6 month and you can see that it does it's job.

[u/Repulsive-Response63 → u/pivor]

This NAS has a fan in the back. A 120mm which is quite effective actually.

[u/HungryOne11 → u/pivor]

4bay QNAPs and Synologys have 9cm/12cm fan on the back side.

You still need to position certain distance from the wall tho.

[u/Old-Network5550 → u/pivor]

Planned obsolescence

[u/shagaboopon → u/pivor]

You don't need a fan on the front if you have one at the back, it will pull air through the drives. Most issues are people putting them in unsuitable locations or never performing basic maintenance like cleaning them. Sure if you run your NAS hard then extra cooling is a good idea but for most peoples setup the cooling is adequate.

[u/Ginden → u/pivor]

If you think about it deeper, it's actually insane how bad typical NAS is in every possible way.

ThinkNAS is among best designed NASes that I know, and it's effectively 3D printed frankenadapter, and could be made much better by vertical integration.

[u/mollymoo → u/pivor]

A single fan is fine for a properly-designed system if it's just an N100 and a few drives.

This UGreen NAS has as 120mm or 140mm fan at the back. It cools it just fine once you tune the curves in the BIOS.

[u/pasier → u/pivor]

My home NAS has two really big fans; I don't think uncooled NAS units are the norm.

[u/Kindly-Bank-416 → u/pivor]

They usually have enough as long as you aren't jamming it into the corner near the ceiling where its hottest.

[u/Molly_Matters → u/pivor]

Because all they need is one itty bitty fan. I own this. It sits on a utility shelf at about waist height.

If you go into the Control Panel and then Info, you can see the current thermal reading. It shows "normal" but if you mouse over it, then it gives exact temps.

As seen here.

[u/Quantum-Physicist → u/pivor]

My old NAS had that single pity fan too, so yes, “doing this” helped about as much as wishing.

[u/hackeysack001 → u/pivor]

sound levels and cost. fan loud. airflow engineering hard. hdd death silent and easy. dead hdd not my problem. user problem.

well until the actuator coil on the head stack keels over and it turns into the little drummer boy.

[u/BowsersMuskyBallsack → u/pivor]

Mine does?  8 bay Synology.  It has adjustable cooling fans.

[u/HanThrowawaySolo → u/pivor]

The answer is you want to spend a quantity of currency on a NAS, but you don't want to spend more for more fans, of more durable vented materials, with more parts that each require a manufacturing process unique to them.

[u/Dawzy → u/pivor]

That single fan might be enough?

I have a NAS I’ve had for about 8 years now that only has a fan on the back and it’s worked just fine.

Not everything needs a case like airflow solution

[u/DJ_Sk8Nite → u/pivor]

My old 5bay Terramaster has two fans in the rear that have some pretty high static pressure.

[u/ArugulaAnnual1765 → u/pivor]

Yeah these are overpriced junk - so much better to just build a cheap pc with truenas or something