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Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes

Faustus
Aspirant

ReadyNAS fan speed spikes

I just recently got an RN428 unit for home use, and popped in some HDDs I had lying around for a test run with a small volume. So far, I only have 3 out of 8 bays filled, with total system temp remaining fairly constant around 42C. There is no data on the volume yet, and there are no apps running or anything. I have the fan profile set to balanced, with the fans running at around 1100 rpm.

 

However, every once in a while (every 10-20 minutes or so) the fan speeds would spike up to around 3200 rpm, making a whole lot of noise, for about a minute, before going down again to the normal speed.

 

So far, the only activity on the NAS is the building of the X-RAID volume (as stated earlier, no apps running, and no data being read/written). Could these speed spikes have something to do with the RAID volume being built, or is something else going on? I'm worried that if this keep happening, especially when I add more disks and the unit get warmer, this will happen more often, making the NAS unusable to me.

 

Please let me know if you know what's going on.

Model: RN428|ReadyNAS 428 – High-performance Business Data Storage - 8-Bays
Message 1 of 14

Accepted Solutions
Faustus
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes

Ok, so I finally got my hands on some new drives, namely HGST Dekstar NAS 4TB drives. Plugged them in, and had the unit recreate the volume. So far (about 4 hour in) no random fan spikes anymore, and all drives report a realistic temperature arounf the 45C mark.

 

The conclusion seems to be that crappy old drives with faulty temp reporting will throw off the temp snesors and cause the fans to spike every once in a while. The problem doesn't appear to be something in the unit itself. Fan speeds also seem to increase with somewhat better incremental steps if the drives do get hotter.

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Message 13 of 14

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StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes


@Faustus wrote:

 

So far, the only activity on the NAS is the building of the X-RAID volume (as stated earlier, no apps running, and no data being read/written).

Well, data is being read/written to the disks (every block of every sector is either read or written when the volume is built.  I'd wait and see if the spikes continue after the volume is built.

 

What disks are you using?

 


@Faustus wrote:

I'm worried that if this keep happening, especially when I add more disks and the unit get warmer, this will happen more often, making the NAS unusable to me.

 


Are you worried about the temperatures?  Or about the noise?

 

The NAS will be able to keep the disks at a reasonable temperature (mine are between 34 and 37C at the moment, and is also set to balanced).  But the fan will come on from time to time, and it would be best to put the NAS in a location where that isn't a problem.

 

Message 2 of 14
Faustus
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes

UPDATE: The volume finished building and I did an upgrade to 6.10 (including reboot). Still no apps running or data read/written. Fan spikes continue, although a little longer apart now (every 20-30 minutes, sometimes more often). Switching to quiet fan profile doesn't help.

 

This is still with only 3 out of 8 bays populated and no data activity on the disks.

Message 3 of 14
Faustus
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes

@StephenBI'm using 1 WD Green diskc and 2 Barracudas, so far. More of those will be added as soon as I get my data migrated off my old NAS. As I say in my update, the spikes continue, although they seem generally farther apart than before.

 

I'm primarilty worried about the noise. I've never had a NAS be this noisy before. I'm running a 5-bay right now, which I practically can't hear even under load. However, this NAS, even running idle (or mostly idle) is making as much noise as a rackmounted unit.

Message 4 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes

What does your temperature graph look like? FWIW, here's mine (526x - using the balanced fan setting):

temps.png

As you can see, the temps will vary depending on activity, and that of course will affect the fans.  I upgraded two disks a week ago (and you can see the higher temps at the very beginning of the graph when the second one was resyncing).  On May 13th I was running rsync to transfer about 3 TB of data to another NAS.  The small daily spikes after that are when the daily backups run.  

 

With little/no activity the fan runs at about 860 rpm.

 


@Faustus wrote:

However, this NAS, even running idle (or mostly idle) is making as much noise as a rackmounted unit.


I can hear mine when the fan kicks into a higher speed, but it certainly doesn't sound like a rackmount unit.  It's possible you have a defective fan - you could try contacting support via my.netgear.com.  

 

Also - is the NAS in the same spot as the older one?  You could try swapping them, just to see if the fan is inducing some vibration in whatever the NAS is on, or if there is some resonance/reflections off of nearby surfaces.

Message 5 of 14
Faustus
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes

I've attached a screenshot of the temp gauge. It only goes back a day, since that's how long it's been on. I'm assuming the big drops correspond to the fan speed spikes, although there have been a whole lot more spikes in the past 24 hours than drops in the graph.

 

Usually the fan would run at about 1050 rpm (balanced setting), but the spikes invariably take that up to ~3200 rpm for about a minute. Both the old NAS and this one are in the same room, although the new NAS is set on a shelf about 20cm higher than the old one. The noise it makes is purely the fans (it sounds like it's trying to take off), no vibrations or echoes. If anything, the new NAS is in a less confined space than the old one, which should reduce both noise reverberations and heat retention.

 

  • My thinking is that the temperature sensitivity is set way too low, causing it to exhaust like crazy whenever the system reaches 32C (and CPU about 42C). Looking at your graph, and assuming that the drops correspond to fan speed increases, I conclude the follwoing:
    Your system can handle temperatures at least 5C degrees above what mine can;
  • You only get about one spike a day (whereas I get them much more often);
  • Overall, your fans expel heat more effeciently, seeing as temperature seems to stay around the same level during the day.

Consequently, I'm wondering the following:

  1. Is there a way to set thethreshold temperature to some higher value?
  2. Is there a way to set the fan speeds so that they increase speed in more of a curve pattern (instead of only a high and low setting and nothing in between)?

I've never had a NAS this noisy before, and it's not like my previous ones were from some brand that is awesome at cooling or anything.

Message 6 of 14
Faustus
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes

Sorry for the double post, but I can't figure out how to add a second attachment to the old post:

 

I just had a double spike, with about a minute or two between them. Not only that, but the spike don't even seem to be doing anything than blow air. The disks are 1c degree cooler than before the spike. This is just so weird. I don't get why this keep happening.

 

I've attached a screen shot of the reported disk temps. Weirdly enough, two disks report 0C degrees, which is probably due to some firmware thing on their side. Both those disks are the Barracuda ones.

 

Message 7 of 14
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes

Your temperature seems to be under control, so it is odd that the fans rev to such a high speed.  That does seem more a hardware issue than a normal operation, but I don't have a 428 to compare with.  If the NAS cannot get the fans to react to a smaller step in desired speed, perhaps it's bumping it up till it sees a result.

 

On your drive temperature display, I assume the DM drives were in sleep mode.  If not, then the mis-reported temperature may be contributing to your issue.  By the way, those are a poor choice for a NAS.

 

While I'm not sure this is your problem, I have found the fan speed step sizes and the temperature hysteresis of the control (point at which it increases speed vs, decreases speed) to be less than ideal on some ReadyNAS.  It is unfortunate that Netgear has not given us an "advanced" capability to control this over beyond quiet, ballanced, and cool.  

Message 8 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes


@Sandshark wrote:

 

If not, then the mis-reported temperature may be contributing to your issue.  

 


Yes, I was actually wondering if they might be sometimes reporting some other temperature that was triggering the fan.

 

Not sure if the barracudas support smartctl -x, but that could give you some disk temperature history (unfortunately missing in the performance stats).  This is what I see with one of my WD100EFAX drives.

 

# smartctl -x /dev/sdb
...
SCT Status Version: 3 SCT Version (vendor specific): 256 (0x0100) SCT Support Level: 0 Device State: Active (0) Current Temperature: 38 Celsius Power Cycle Min/Max Temperature: 17/43 Celsius Lifetime Min/Max Temperature: 14/48 Celsius Under/Over Temperature Limit Count: 0/0 SCT Temperature History Version: 2 Temperature Sampling Period: 1 minute Temperature Logging Interval: 1 minute Min/Max recommended Temperature: 0/65 Celsius Min/Max Temperature Limit: -40/70 Celsius Temperature History Size (Index): 128 (6) Index Estimated Time Temperature Celsius 7 2020-05-21 12:38 37 ****************** ... ..( 7 skipped). .. ****************** 15 2020-05-21 12:46 37 ****************** 16 2020-05-21 12:47 38 ******************* 17 2020-05-21 12:48 37 ****************** 18 2020-05-21 12:49 38 ******************* 19 2020-05-21 12:50 37 ****************** 20 2020-05-21 12:51 38 ******************* 21 2020-05-21 12:52 37 ****************** 22 2020-05-21 12:53 38 ******************* 23 2020-05-21 12:54 37 ****************** ... ..( 9 skipped). .. ****************** 33 2020-05-21 13:04 37 ****************** 34 2020-05-21 13:05 38 ******************* 35 2020-05-21 13:06 38 ******************* 36 2020-05-21 13:07 38 ******************* 37 2020-05-21 13:08 37 ****************** 38 2020-05-21 13:09 37 ****************** 39 2020-05-21 13:10 38 ******************* 40 2020-05-21 13:11 37 ****************** 41 2020-05-21 13:12 37 ****************** 42 2020-05-21 13:13 38 ******************* 43 2020-05-21 13:14 37 ****************** 44 2020-05-21 13:15 38 ******************* 45 2020-05-21 13:16 37 ****************** 46 2020-05-21 13:17 37 ****************** 47 2020-05-21 13:18 38 ******************* 48 2020-05-21 13:19 38 ******************* 49 2020-05-21 13:20 37 ****************** 50 2020-05-21 13:21 38 ******************* 51 2020-05-21 13:22 37 ****************** 52 2020-05-21 13:23 37 ****************** 53 2020-05-21 13:24 38 ******************* 54 2020-05-21 13:25 37 ****************** 55 2020-05-21 13:26 37 ****************** 56 2020-05-21 13:27 38 ******************* ... ..( 2 skipped). .. ******************* 59 2020-05-21 13:30 38 ******************* 60 2020-05-21 13:31 37 ****************** ... ..( 2 skipped). .. ****************** 63 2020-05-21 13:34 37 ****************** 64 2020-05-21 13:35 38 ******************* ... ..( 68 skipped). .. ******************* 5 2020-05-21 14:44 38 ******************* 6 2020-05-21 14:45 37 ******************

 

 

Message 9 of 14
Faustus
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes


@Sandshark wrote:

On your drive temperature display, I assume the DM drives were in sleep mode.  If not, then the mis-reported temperature may be contributing to your issue.  By the way, those are a poor choice for a NAS. 


As I'm out of ideas as to what is going on, and Google (or searching the forums) isn't yielding any probable solutions, I'm going to proceed on the assumption that the faulty temp reporting by the two drives is the issue. The drives were not in sleep mode, I have no sleep times configured.

 

I've been looking as some 3TB WD Reds (those are some better choices than the ones I have now, I'm hoping), so I'll have to see if I can get my hands on those and test with them.

 


@StephenB wrote:

Yes, I was actually wondering if they might be sometimes reporting some other temperature that was triggering the fan.

Yeah, as I said, I'm going to proceed under that assumption. Executing smartctl -x only produces a temp history on the first drive, and not on either of the others. I'm going to try getting new drives and seeing if faulty temp reporting might be causing this.

Message 10 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes


@Faustus wrote:

 

I've been looking as some 3TB WD Reds (those are some better choices than the ones I have now, I'm hoping), so I'll have to see if I can get my hands on those and test with them.

 


I'd recommend the older WD30EFRX over the WD30EFAX.  The WD30EFAX is an SMR drive - questionable use in a RAID array.  The 3 TB Ironwolf is also worth considering.

 

Personally I've gone with fewer but larger drives myself.

Message 11 of 14
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes

One of the issues with green drives is that they will put themselves to sleep.  I'm not sure if they can report temperature in that mode or not.  But that may also be contributing to your problem.  I do not know how Netgear combines drive, system, and CPU temperatures into their fan spped control algorithm.

Message 12 of 14
Faustus
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes

Ok, so I finally got my hands on some new drives, namely HGST Dekstar NAS 4TB drives. Plugged them in, and had the unit recreate the volume. So far (about 4 hour in) no random fan spikes anymore, and all drives report a realistic temperature arounf the 45C mark.

 

The conclusion seems to be that crappy old drives with faulty temp reporting will throw off the temp snesors and cause the fans to spike every once in a while. The problem doesn't appear to be something in the unit itself. Fan speeds also seem to increase with somewhat better incremental steps if the drives do get hotter.

Message 13 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS fan speed spikes

Thx for following up.

Message 14 of 14
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