Silent NAS wanted

First - all of the 4 bay units except the NV+ v2 have virtually the same hardware. They all have the 92mm case fan and an internal fanless PSU. The NV+ v2 has an external power brick as do all the 2 bay units. All of the fans vary their speeds based on heat conditions.

In the living room next to the TV is a poor location, for if after a bit, you will walk up to any flat screen TV you can feel the heat emanating from it. I have a 52" Plasma that is now 6 years old and the area around the TV is several degrees warmer than the rest of the room which is warmer than the rest of the house.

You would be better off to place the NAS in another room with an ethernet connection between the NAS and the living room if at all possible. Except for the Time Machine backing up your desktop/laptop, I don't see any provision for data protection. If you load up two separate disks with movies, and one of the disks goes down, then you have lost them unless you still have the original DVDs. Then a single disk for music and general files. If the general files are not on the desktop/laptop backed up by Time Machine, they should be.

PapaBear wrote:
First - all of the 4 bay units except the NV+ v2 have virtually the same hardware. They all have the 92mm case fan and an internal fanless PSU. The NV+ v2 has an external power brick as do all the 2 bay units. All of the fans vary their speeds based on heat conditions.

OK, but which is more silent?

In the living room next to the TV is a poor location, for if after a bit, you will walk up to any flat screen TV you can feel the heat emanating from it. I have a 52" Plasma that is now 6 years old and the area around the TV is several degrees warmer than the rest of the room which is warmer than the rest of the house.

I have a separate room for my home cinema, but the NAS must go in the living room. There's no TV there, and the stereo system is ca. 1m away.

You would be better off to place the NAS in another room with an ethernet connection between the NAS and the living room if at all possible. Except for the Time Machine backing up your desktop/laptop, I don't see any provision for data protection. If you load up two separate disks with movies, and one of the disks goes down, then you have lost them unless you still have the original DVDs. Then a single disk for music and general files. If the general files are not on the desktop/laptop backed up by Time Machine, they should be.

Don't worry, I will backup all 4 disks of the NAS with external USB drives. The content of the 3 media disks doesn't change much, there's only a few movies or CDs added per month. But the TimeMachine disk in the NAS of course gets new content every day, so I will backup that frequently.

Thanks for your thoughts, but they are already being thought of. The NAS must go in the living room, so I just want to find the most silent solution.

Which 4-6 bay NAS is the most silent one (regarding hardware, isolation, foam, fan noise, case vibrations...)?

Is it possible to spin down unused drives?

It is possible to set drive spin down. As I have always had mine in an X-Raid/X-Raid2 structure, I don't know if it will spin down unused drives in a flex-raid mode. While I do not have any way to measure volume, none of the three ReadyNAS units (one NV+ v1, two NVX) I have would I consider noisy, in fact when I am on the desktop, they are only about 4 feet from my ear, sitting on top of the table. I do on occasion hear the drives, but not all the time. In my opinion, a 6 bay would have a higher noise level than a 4 bay (three fans and more drives). Since the difference in the Ultra 4 and Ultra 4 Plus is a single core processor against a dual core in the Plus, and the Pro 4 has the same hardware as the Ultra 4 Plus, I would say that the noise level would be the same, and I would expect them to be as quiet as my NVX.

I will leave it to others if it is possible to configure four Raid0 volumes on a 4 bay unit. I simply do not know.

Mostly 2-bay and 6-bay units from a series of ReadyNAS units (e.g. Ultra) will be quietest. However with the NV+ v2 having an external PSU that will help reduce the cooling that is needed and help keep the noise down.

You can configure up to four Flex-RAID volumes and these can be RAID-0 volumes. On the Duo v2 and NV+ v2 you can select the JBOD option.

On other models you can select Flex-RAID and delete the existing volume that is created and create the ones you want. On x86, when you choose Flex-RAID, I think you can choose to create no volume which will help save some time.

The OS is stored on the disks so I would think that the drives would still tend to spin down and up together even using Flex-RAID.

You really can't put the NAS anywhere else? You can't find a place (e.g. the garage - of course you'd need a power point if there isn't one already) to put it and get a cabler in to run an ethernet cable or two to the living room (or wherever you want it run to)?

mdgm wrote:
Mostly 2-bay and 6-bay units from a series of ReadyNAS units (e.g. Ultra) will be quietest.

2-bay because of fewer noise sources and 6-bay because of larger cooling fan, right?

However with the NV+ v2 having an external PSU that will help reduce the cooling that is needed and help keep the noise down.

Thanks, didn't thought of that. So the NV+ series should be more silent than an Ultra4.

You can configure up to four Flex-RAID volumes and these can be RAID-0 volumes. On the Duo v2 and NV+ v2 you can select the JBOD option.

So on an Ultra6, I would still have to deal with RAID.

The OS is stored on the disks so I would think that the drives would still tend to spin down and up together even using Flex-RAID.

Huh?
How can you start a barebone NAS with brand new drives when the OS is on the disks? That should be in flash ROM...

You really can't put the NAS anywhere else? You can't find a place (e.g. the garage - of course you'd need a power point if there isn't one already) to put it and get a cabler in to run an ethernet cable or two to the living room (or wherever you want it run to)?

I am living in a small flat on 3rd floor of a large city house - there's no garage and I cannot run a cable to the cellar.

My first harddrive (Mac II, 1988) was a 5.25" full height monster that sounded like a jet engine - today I barely hear the WD 2TB external USB drive sitting right behind my MacBook on the table. I would expect to not hear it at all if it were in a decent case with some noise isolation and not just in a cheap plastic box.
Of course I would choose the drives for my NAS regarding their noise level, I don't care about speed as long as an HD movie plays seamlessly.

fesh wrote:
mdgm wrote: Mostly 2-bay and 6-bay units from a series of ReadyNAS units (e.g. Ultra) will be quietest. 2-bay because of fewer noise sources and 6-bay because of larger cooling fan, right?

I think so.

fesh wrote:
However with the NV+ v2 having an external PSU that will help reduce the cooling that is needed and help keep the noise down. Thanks, didn't thought of that. So the NV+ series should be more silent than an Ultra4.

I would think so, though the Comparison Chart indicates they have the same noise level as each other.

fesh wrote:
You can configure up to four Flex-RAID volumes and these can be RAID-0 volumes. On the Duo v2 and NV+ v2 you can select the JBOD option. So on an Ultra6, I would still have to deal with RAID.

On the Ultra 6 yes you would have to deal with creating RAID volumes on the disks.

fesh wrote:
The OS is stored on the disks so I would think that the drives would still tend to spin down and up together even using Flex-RAID. Huh? How can you start a barebone NAS with brand new drives when the OS is on the disks? That should be in flash ROM...

[/quote]
The OS is installed from the flash onto the disks.

fesh wrote:
You really can't put the NAS anywhere else? You can't find a place (e.g. the garage - of course you'd need a power point if there isn't one already) to put it and get a cabler in to run an ethernet cable or two to the living room (or wherever you want it run to)? I am living in a small flat on 3rd floor of a large city house - there's no garage and I cannot run a cable to the cellar.

Understood.

fesh wrote:

My first harddrive (Mac II, 1988) was a 5.25" full height monster that sounded like a jet engine - today I barely hear the WD 2TB external USB drive sitting right behind my MacBook on the table. I would expect to not hear it at all if it were in a decent case with some noise isolation and not just in a cheap plastic box. Of course I would choose the drives for my NAS regarding their noise level, I don't care about speed as long as an HD movie plays seamlessly.

The NAS is a computer and is designed as Network Attached Storage so it can be placed away from your computer. Choose disks from the Hard Disk HCL

I don't think you'll find anything that meets your expectations.
In my experience the noise of the unit isn't determined by the discs, but the fan cooling the cpu - if the machine is up and running, so is the fan.
There is very little difference in the fan speed of my Pro wither the discs are spinning or spun down.
Find a stand alone air cooled drive if you're serious about sound.
Maybe you nee a NAS for the volume of your collection, but maybe it can be shut down when you really need silence?

fesh - if your NAS is going to be in the living room, and the TV (home cinema) is in another room, what connection will be between the TV box and the NAS?

onimod wrote:

I don't think you'll find anything that meets your expectations. In my experience the noise of the unit isn't determined by the discs, but the fan cooling the cpu - if the machine is up and running, so is the fan. There is very little difference in the fan speed of my Pro wither the discs are spinning or spun down. Find a stand alone air cooled drive if you're serious about sound. Maybe you nee a NAS for the volume of your collection, but maybe it can be shut down when you really need silence?

Yeah, I also read here in the forum about people putting a more silent fan into their NAS.

But I am also concerned about power consumption. This will be a true "home" server. Unused after midnight and almost the whole day until we come home again after work - so it probably is only used 4-6 hours in the evening. I want the whole NAS to sleep the other 18-20 hours. And wake-on-lan when I need it. Usually when I come home I will first listen to music (mt-daap from the NAS, music disk), surf the web, e-mail... and then after dinner maybe watch a movie (movie disk) before sleeping. So I first need only the music disk, then the backup disk (once every hour for 5 minutes), and once I arrive at the movies disk the music+backup disks can sleep... No, I don't want to manually switch disks on and off, I want a computer (NAS) to do that for me.

Of course, I could just buy two 2-bay NAS boxes, one with music+backup, one with 2 movie disks. But why pay for 2 "computers" if one is enough to do the job? All I ask for is to spin down unused disks...

PapaBear wrote:
if your NAS is going to be in the living room, and the TV (home cinema) is in another room, what connection will be between the TV box and the NAS?

I don't have a TV, but an Apple 23" Cinema Display hanging at the wall of my bedroom - actually also only 1m away from the place I intend to put the NAS, but with the wall in between. That Cinema Display is connected to a PowerBook G4 which plays the movie (at the moment from external USB disk, in the future from the NAS), and audio is sent via optical TOSlink to my AV Receiver which powers the 5.1 speaker system.
I plan to buy the next generation AppleTV box, if that can play full HD movies (1920*1080) - the current generation can only play 1280*720 "half HD" movies.

OK, my question is what connection will there be between the NAS and the device playing the movie (AppleTV or whatever)? If you are planning wireless, I'm not sure that even Wireless N will have enough bandwidth to do it.

In the same vein, you will have to have some device between the NAS and the receiver to play the music. That can be wireless.

I am also in the mind that either all the disks will be spun down or spun up together, not individually. I don't know of any box that will do that. Also, the drives spinning up is NOT Wake On Lan, that term applies to a box that is physically turned off but then turns on and boots when accessed. In Spin Down, the box is on and the fan is on. Only the drives are stopped. When you access the unit, even going into Frontview and accessing any section beyond the home page will do it, the drives spin up. The LCD panel will come on and say spinning up. My backup unit is set for spin down after 90 minutes so it is only up during the time it resyncs to my primary NAS during the wee hours of the morning.