Replacing the fan in ReadyNAS Duo - possible?

I seem to have a very high pitched noise emitting from the Readynas Duo and it took me a while to track it down to the NAS. It is so high pitched my wife says she cant hear it and the kids havent moaned about it but it is driving me mad, my ears are still ringing an hour after i turn the NAS off (put my hands on my ears and i can hear it so its nothing in the room still!!). It has only just started this noise though.

Traced it to either the fan or some electronics in the NAS but on disconnection of the fan and powering the NAS up briefly (drives also removed to make sure they werent the noise source) it was silent so it must be the fan. Seems to make the same noise no matter the RPM of the fan.

So i'm going to try the Fractal Designs fan, there is an R2 version now which i dont think the other people in this thread were using?
R2 - http://fractal-design.com/?view=product&category=4&prod=75
Other - http://fractal-design.com/?view=product&category=4&prod=15

It has a higher CFM and a lower dB than the other one mentioned in this thread.

I will update the thread once i've got the fan and tried it out.

If you purchased the duo in July 2011, then it would still be under warranty, so that would be another option for you.

I assumed it only had 1yr warranty, more fool me! :oops:

Probably easier for me to just change the fan as i've ordered it now plus one of the side panel screws wont come out, seems to have been tightened really hard from new...the others came out no bother. The head on it is knackered now, will have to drill it out but i can change the fan with just the panel on the fan connector side taken off i think (stuck screw is on the top right looking from the back of the NAS).

How can Netgear tell if i replaced the fan ? When changing the fan, is there a sticker that i have to remove or something like that ?

My ReadyNAS is very noisy (i'm in a silent room) and the fan is very annoying. I'm in a temperature controlled room with green drives so the temperatures are always under 40'C.

I'm sure i can change the fans without overheating my unit but i'm worried about losing my warranty since i already had a ReadyNAS Ultra 4 fail for absolutly no reason and i had to RMA it. So if i change the fan, then my unit fail (not because of overheating) can i just change back the fan to the original and RMA the unit to netgear or is there a way they will notice it ?

My stock fan was starting to make an annoying high pitched noise. Just replaced it with the Fractal Designs R2 and can't believe how much quieter it is, should have done this years ago

The fan of my ReadyNAS also started to run at over 5k rpm, it woke me up this morning at 6am and there is a door in between. :shock:

Immediatly changed to a NB XR-2.

I have two Hitachi HDE721010SLA330 1TB and the NAS was running at aroud 45°C at 3000 rpm constant with the old fan.
With the new fan, temps dropped to around 33 when idle @ 1050 rpm...ambient room temp is 27°C.

Now it's as quiet as when I first got the NAS.