How to silence a NAS with loud noise? Placed in the bedroom so noisy I couldn't sleep. After setting up three sets of shock-absorbing fans, I tested it dropped by 9 decibels

the night of the first cold wave of winter, I admitted defeat. As soon as the window closed, the sound of the Feiniu NAS in the corner of the bedroom filled the air: the humming of the bass, the tiny clicking sounds. During the day, the ambient noise drowned out the sound and you didn't feel anything, but the quiet of night was just exhausting. Using the phone decibel app to test at a 30-centimeter mark on the case, it was 42 decibels. After two weekends of turmoil, it's now stable around 33. I haven't compromised on the market or temperature. I've written down the route and copied the people who got criticized.

first lie down by the machine and listen for three minutes: three types of sounds, three types of illnesses

the biggest fear of silent sound is that the medicine is wrong. Move a chair to sit next to the machine, listen for three to five minutes, separate the sounds, and then prescribe the right remedy. It's best to turn off the air conditioning at night before listening; during the day, when the ambient noise is noisy, you won't be able to hear anything.

fan noise it's a persistent buzzing or whooshing noise, which comes out as soon as you turn it on. It doesn't really care about the load, and when the temperature gets high, it gets worse. Reaching into the air vent and feeling a gust of wind is its best ID card.

hard drive searches for the path the cracking and sizzling of beans being stirred, only occurring when reading and writing. This is most obvious when I idle downloading at night or building an index for albums; once I have free time, I just quiet down.

resonance is low-frequency buzzing. There's a method to judge it accurately: press the top cover of the case with your palm, and the sound immediately drops a bit—this is the vibration of the disc traveling through the bracket to the metal of the case, amplified by the entire case. My car has all three types, so all three must be repaired.

there is a kind of sound outside this discussion: a muffled sound that clicks once and then every few seconds. This isn't a noise issue, it's a sign that the drive is about to shut down. Back up your data first, then talk about mute—don't reverse the order.

Arguing about the suspension of the

cannot save it: the noise limit is set when choosing a disc

first tell me about my home's disc: a used Galaxy Exos 16T I bought cheaply, a corporate unit. Looking at the specs, it gets around 20dBA when idle, about the same as a home NAS drive. That's exactly how I was fooled by the specs back then. Trap in the sound of seeking the way—corporate search can reach 26~30dBA, and when QBittorrent opens at night, the whole room is filled with bean roasting.

later checked the official acoustic specs, I understood: NAS drives like the Cool Wolf have an idle 20~21dBA and much less path-seeking noise, designed specifically for multi-bay environments in living rooms and bedrooms; Galaxy is a product of data centers; the data center doesn't care about such noise at all. So my conclusion on choosing a project is straightforward: place the machine in inaudible corners like weak current boxes or storage rooms. Corporate homes can be easily installed, and cheap capacity is the hard truth; Put the machine in the bedroom or study, honestly buy a NAS drive. Used corporate properties require careful consideration. Besides the high power consumption, I mentioned in my electricity bill that SAS often costs 14 watts per unit, arguing like helicopters, and electricity bills double.

my final decision: the Galaxy would retire as a cold backup drive, with no electricity on the regular basis; The main player switched to a Cool Wolf 4T. I've written a separate article on data migration disk swap migration , so I won't go into detail here. By the way, when you get a new property, get it tested before starting work. Don't bring in those with health issues. this article the full process.

resonance is the amplifier: a silicone pad for twenty yuan is more effective than anything else

switched the tray, the bean stir-fry sound disappeared, but that low-frequency buzzing was still there. When pressing the case with your palm, the sound decreases, confirming the resonance. This step is actually a nod from Synology's official knowledge base: the main source of NAS noise is often not the drive itself, but the vibration transmission between the hard drive and the bracket. A thin metal case acts as a resonance box.

ranked by value for money, that's how I set it up. the first screwdriver it sounds rough and effective. Run through the screws on the drive rack and case cover one by one—loosening one more resonance means more resonance. Synology's official advice is even harsher: the fixed panels on both sides of the tray can be removed directly, and the tray is fixed to the bracket with screws, resulting in a shorter vibration conduction path. second batch of silicone shock absorber pads, a rubber ring or silicone pad for the hard drive holder and screw slots, a big pack costs around ten or twenty yuan. After installation, the low-frequency buzzing is visibly smaller. This is the best value I've spent in the past two weeks. third blade pad for the case , place thick pads under the legs of all four cases, or cut an old mouse pad to cut off the transmission path between the machine and the desk. I don't recommend using foam blocks; after a few months, they collapse and the sound gradually returns, making all the effort wasted.

online, there are cable tie suspending "hanging ghost" solutions, where the hard drive is elastically suspended inside the case with cable ties, completely isolated, but it takes up too much space—four drives can barely fit in the machine. If the noise isn't too loud, this trick is not recommended. By the way, if you have many trays, don't stack the Luohan Outfit with trays—space them every grid as much as possible, as both cooling and vibration insulation benefit.

Fans: Synology has ready-made switches, but Feiniu has to do it themselves

After

resonance is handled, the remaining buzzing sound is the fan. The treatment of these two systems is very different.

Synology DSM7 is just a few steps: control panel→ hardware and power supply→ standard → fan speed mode, full speed, low-temperature cooling, silent, and power-saving settings. My old DS220j was switched to silent mode, and the whistling noise immediately dropped significantly. Don't worry about burning the machine on silent mode. If the temperature really goes over the limit, the system will automatically raise the RPM and lower it when it cools down, so you won't risk buying the disc just for quietness.

Feiniu fnOS doesn't have this luck. The system doesn't have a ready-made fan mode switch, so you have to install it yourself: for basic ones, use fancontrol and pair it with pwmconfig to generate temperature control curves; If you want to see the graphical interface, install CoolerControl; The community also has plugins like fnos-fan-control, with four modes and custom curves. Following the tutorial, you can finish it in half an hour. If you're building your own PC, don't overlook the BIOS. Set the smart temperature control startup temperature higher, so the fan won't spin loudly as soon as you turn it on.

a reminder: Don't over-reduce noise cancellation. I tried pressing the curve too hard, pushing the disc temperature up to 46 degrees. The hard drive runs up 45 degrees all year round, and bad zones come out early. This issue was calculated in the of the hard drive precursors. From my experience, I usually stop when it hits around 38 degrees. Quietness and cooling are like seesaws—don't crush one end.

software layer keeps the disk moving: the quietness at night is the result of scheduling

the hardware was done, I was still occasionally woken up by a cracking sound at night—the disk was moving. At this point, it's no longer about tightening screws, but about scheduling tasks.

download is the prime suspect. High-frequency small writes like qBittorrent allow mechanical drives to search for directions all night. My solution was to move the download directory to the SSD, which happened to be the I removed after trying cache for three months. The mechanical disk slept soundly at night, and downloads were not delayed at all.

second tier consists of heavy tasks like album indexing, full disk scanning, and backup tasks, all moved to daytime work. Synology just needs to change the time in the Planning Tasks section of the Control Panel, and the same applies to Feiniu's scheduled tasks. I also put the hard drive into sleep mode. At night, the drive really stopped, the world was quiet, and I set the waiting time at least 20 minutes. If the drive was too short, it would wake up just as it fell asleep. The start-stop movement was louder than running. Those who are dormant but always mysteriously awakened, go secretly write and investigate that , but the killers keep coming and going, just a few.

Taking the Role: Which Path Do You Hear When You Hear It

After two weekends of turmoil, my report card ranged from 42 to 33 decibels. The Galaxy replaced Cool Wolf with the majority of the time, the shock absorbers contributed that bass, the fans and dispatch controlled the scattered noises, and the cost was one yuan of the base plus twenty yuan of padding. Your situation should be interpreted accordingly:

Don't mess up the

order: first listen for sound positioning, then screw the pad (the cheapest), then set the fan mode, adjust the task schedule. After finishing all the first steps, there's still some noise, and only then is it time to change the disc and move. Switching to an all-solid-state one right from the start—what a waste of money. In the end, the quietest NAS in the bedroom is the one you've already set up.