I previously mentioned The Art Of Server on ebay/youtube. I am just about to order an Intel X550-T2 10Gb 10GBaseT RJ-45 PCIe 3.0 x4 NIC Full Profile (HPE 562T) from him. He emailed me to say they had arrived after I asked him about 2 weeks ago. Best customer service anywhere!
4 Likes
I got the Mellanox installed, and it’s working (though I haven’t yet put it under heavy load to test that), but.
Never again. That card lives there forever now. I still can’t believe I managed to get into that thing and install the card and button it up again without breaking something.
Between that and the design flaw in the drive bay/caddies that makes defective units buzz like the offspring of a 1985 fridge and a table saw, I would have a lot of trouble recommending the 6 or 8 bay at ths point versus a custom build.
(UGREEN confirmed the noise issue was some kind of defect and RMA’d my first NAS. The new one is accoustically much better and was near silent at idle … until something went wrong with caddy 8’s front flip-up handle/flap thing. It vibrates now unless I stuff paper towel between it and it and caddy 7. Still an amazing deal for the Kickstarter price, but the design is flawed and prone to issues.)
2 Likes
Can. NOT. Unread. That.
2 Likes
I’ll spare you the recording, unless you want to hear the before and after of my epic, sophisticated sound dampening solution that taxed the crew in my homelab R&D to the limit.
I present the finest in fibrous organic noise dampening solutions.
That quiets the buzzing almost entirely. And only when it’s in that spot. Any lower, and it has no impact.
Something I can fix with some rolled up paper towel isn’t worth another RMA.
1 Like
I remember those days. They ended with the ban of 7200rpm drives from my household.
Something about their 120Hz vibration characteristic is ideal for exciting any and every computer part that isn’t bolted directly to the floor. Those drives are welcome to vibrate plastic and metal in someone else’s home.
1 Like
I remember those days. They ended with the ban of 7200rpm drives from my household.
Something about their 120Hz vibration characteristic is ideal for exciting any and every computer part that isn’t bolted directly to the floor. Those drives are welcome to vibrate plastic and metal in someone else’s home.
I’m guessing you use 5400 RPM drives?
I really, really don’t mind the sound the actual drives make, and aside from That One Drive Bay, this one isn’t doing evil vibrations. I grew up with 1980s/1990s Macs and their screaming demon SCSI disks. Modern SATA III 7200 RPM drives are loud, but the noise profile is a pleasing, chunky, “we are doing work” noise.
As long as the NAS itself isn’t having a vibration attack, the drives are basically silent at idle.
At least the HGST/WD Golds I’ve owned. I’ve heard less-good things about Seagate’s noise profile.
I’m also using used enterprise SATA III SATA drives, from enterprise equipment dealers with warranties on eBay. For the capacities I want, they’re cheaper than new consumer drives, and they come with warranties. 14 TB WD Gold-equivalent HGSTs for $100/each was … neat. 
If I had it to do over again, I’d take a serious look at 5400 RPM enterprise drives, if those exist, as I really don’t think I need the extra oomph from 7200 RPM, but … I’ve already spent money on these now.
I don’t think that such a thing exists. Feel free to prove me wrong.
1 Like
They haven’t existed in years, except may be a handful in the 2.5” realm. Even drives marketed by WD as “5,400 rpm class” turned out to be artificially gelded 7,200 RPM drives.
The marketing gods at WD figured out there was a market for lower power drives and that people were willing to pay for it. Undeterred by then-recent scandals re: shipping DM-SMR drives instead of CMR drives in the Red NAS series, they did that too.
If you want real lower noise / heat / power, go for the He series from HGST. Too bad they are no longer separate from WD.
Yes with one running 5640 I believe.
I don’t mind seek noise nor do I mind the quiet hiss of spinning platters. It’s when a drive has just a flyspeck of imbalance and plays hey I’m a paint-shaker that I get annoyed.
It’s worse with multiple drives spinning at ever-so-slightly different speeds. After some minutes/hours the heavy sides of the platters get in-sync and sing an obnoxious duet.
Lately my 7200rpm bigotry is becoming expensive to maintain as 5400/5640/5900 cost per TB tends to run higher. Many popular refurbishers have zero of these in stock at any given time.
1 Like
This has been proven by measuring the frequency of the sound it gives off, it matches that of a 7200 rpm drive.
1 Like