Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Have you tried a non-tech solution, like putting the drives into some noise absorbing materials, or isolating the sound with the hard case, things like that? That may sound not really obvious, but my guess is that you can at least get some noise off with a solution like this.
I won’t go with SSDs for a NAS as it’s very expensive. But if money of no concern, that Beelink thing looks impressive.
There are plenty of NAS systems that use M.2 SSDs. Those should be pretty much silent. You might even have to sell only one kidney to afford the drives.
Meh, you got a spare kidney...
I tried a fully fledged consumer NAS (QNAP with Seagate 12 TB NAS drives) but the noise of the platters was not acceptable.
If you have a NAS, then you can put it as far away as your network reaches. Just put it somewhere where you can't hear the thing.
Yeah I would do that if I could but unfortunately we would hear the thing regardless of where I would set it up in the flat.
I realize you're looking for new toys, but 'anywhere in the flat' includes 'under a pile of pillows.' Otherwise, for personal photo-sized storage, just put a couple 2.5mm format SSDs in the QNAP.
Regarding NAS loudness volume: I can give you some advice as mine is in my bedroom.
Choose quiet drives. I deployed 4x Toshiba N300 15TB He HDDsin RaidZ2
Maybe mod the drive cages: Use something like sticly velcro strips (soft side) on all sides that HDD/caddies touch the caddy and case/chassie.
Move your intensive access times to late night (4am for example) or when you are at work/gone from home.
Use a soft surface. I have placed the NAS on soft foam from packing materials to reduce vibrations.
Happy storing :)
If the NAS is always making noise then it's not parking the drives. Check the config - I'm not sure QNap does drive parking by defaut if at all. Fron what I've seen, they're a Business Class solution first, consumer second (I have friends in the SMB space, QNAP has been a common solution for their clients), business doesn't want drive parking.
I have an ancient Drobo that does parking and uses a large fan (so it can run at lower speeds, meaning quieter) - with 5 drives I don't hear it over ambient room noise (the fridge is louder).
Give us some numbers on space. My NAS is 8TB that I keep 20% free (It complains with less free space and performance drops), my server has an 8TB data drive, with two 4TB externals attached. I replicate data from the server to each device on a rolling schedule for data redundancy, and also use a cloud backup for the important stuff (less than 1TB).
The point I'm trying to make is maybe you don't need a RAID NAS right now if your critical data size is below available single-drive capacity, and may be better served by multiple drives and cloud backup. (Also, a NAS is still a single point of failure - RAID isn't redundant data it's redundant drives. Even with ZFS it's still a single data store that can fail, which is why businesses still have backups of their RAID systems).
To paraphrase an old racing saying: quiet costs money son, how silent you want it to be? 🤪
Edit: Some links on QNAP drive spindown
https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/faq/article/why-cant-my-nas-drives-enter-standby-mode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7ItW76PyBw
Edit2: Even SSD is like 4-6x the cost of spinning disk per terabyte https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new%2Cused&capacity=8-8&disk_types=external_ssd%2Cinternal_ssd%2Cm2_ssd%2Cm2_nvme
An M.2 PCIe card can make most old computers into a good SSD NAS.
https://www.startech.com/en-eu/hdd/quad-m2-pcie-card-b
I have used this card for a couple years.
Pros:
- five m.2 sata slots
- single slot pcie, and short / not extending past top of slot
- incredibly cheap
- mine has been reliable
- no extra power needed
- no pcie bifurcation or other special motherboard features required (works in anything)
- the individual drives do show up as individual drives in Debian for me and can be accessed separately (not a hardware raid card)
Cons:
- pcie 3.0x2 speed in an x16 slot (2GBps)
- doesn't support m.2 pci
- doesn't support booting from the installed drives
If all you're looking for is cheap, quiet, storage, and you don't mind losing out on total read/write speeds, thisll actually do great just about anywhere.
I have a few different makes of these and have been surprised by how big PSU I had to put (versus on-the-wall measured wattage) for them to not occasionally randomly fail and cutting a drive off until reboot. I guess it's spikes they don't handle well. Besides that, the cards themselves obviously add some overhead in that department. Something to consider if low-power is a priority.
There has also been one or two drives that just wouldn't work at all with either card, but were fine in individual slots. Vaguely suspecting drive firmware there.
They do serve their purpose well but just to add some catches for anyone eyeing them. Startech is the brand I had the least glitches with FWIW but keep in mind that's just one anecdote.
Also ask yourself if you really need PCIe4 because the PCIe3 models are quite a bit cheaper, cooler and more stable.
Oh, and make sure your motherboard supports PCIe bifurcation. Especially for older computers that's not always a given.
Ah yeah - always a good idea to verify support on the motherboard. I think AMD mbs are usually better on the bifurcation front than Intel ones.
The Startech card I linked is backwards compatible with PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe cards, they mention that they've tested with Samsung 970 EVO for example, so you can still fill it up with older, cooler M.2 cards even if it supports PCIe 4.0.
Worth noting that cards such as this (with mote than one M.2 slot) require the mainboard to support PCIe bifurcation – which most old boards likely do not.
Edit: Cards with just one slot do not require this feature so you can plug them into any board that has a free PCIe slot. Unless you also want to boot from them, in which case you might need to modify your UEFI. I went that route and succeeded, but be aware of the risks involved.
Had a fun one when I put an 8x card forking into two nvme drives in a mobo that I thought compatible. No matter what, only one of them connects. Turned out:
- The 8x slot didn't bifurcate at all
- The secondary 16x slot could do up to 8x4x4. Which is the same as no bifurcation for an 8x card in that slot.
- GPU only works in the primary slot
You think you think of everything...
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| LVM | (Linux) Logical Volume Manager for filesystem mapping |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| NVMe | Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage |
| PCIe | Peripheral Component Interconnect Express |
| PSU | Power Supply Unit |
| Plex | Brand of media server package |
| RAID | Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage |
| SATA | Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage |
| SMB | Server Message Block protocol for file and printer sharing; Windows-native |
| SSD | Solid State Drive mass storage |
| ZFS | Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity |
[Thread #1000 for this comm, first seen 13th Jan 2026, 08:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I repeat myself but check out Odroid H4+.
4 SATA ports and if you split one m2 port you can also put 3 pcie3 nvme (you could split one port up to 4 but just one lane per drive is bit sad).
Same idea as the rotating miniPCs on Ali except you actually have a shot at BIOS upgrades and not as dodgy supply chain.
https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h4-plus/
If you put BIOS in power efficiency mode it can run fanless as long as the ambient temperature isn't balming.
If it's really just for NAS this is still more than you really need. You could get away a lot cheaper and leaner with something like the ARM-based HC4.
https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc4/
Or check out Jeff Geerlings PiNAS shenanigans.
The Beelink looks all right. Personally I prefer the flexibility of non-soldered RAM but I guess it's mainly a question of how much of an out-of-box experience you are looking for.
Seeed Studio reServer is also nice, though that's on the beefier and pricier side.
The H4 plus honnestly looks great. I do have a 3d printer so an custom NAS enclosure would be easy to manufacture. And 4 SATA ports for ssd should be more than enough. Thank you!
Usually 2.5" hdd tends to be more silent. But they are definitely worse from a nas perspective and not so in the ratio €/gb.
The solution with non mechanical disks is by far the most silent, but prepare the wallet and probably a kidney too.
Don't use them.
Very easy to pick SMR HDDs by accident.
You don't want those inside a NAS.
That depends on the usage, see: https://www.xda-developers.com/smr-hdds-are-fine-for-your-nas-until-you-try-to-resilver/
If you keep this issue in mind and avoid resilvering / balancing they can work just fine in a media storage NAS.
Too dangerous for me.
Too much room for error.
They use a lot less power too. For small home NAS they are really an often overlooked option.
My setup is an old Dell Wyse thin client and 4 external USB drives. The thin client is basically silent. The drives only make sound when they're active, and spin down when idle. The thin client has an Intel CPU with QuickSync so it can even transcode with Plex. For data redundancy between the hard drives, I use lsyncd to make a poor man's mirror setup.
Works great. Lives in a cabinet in my living room.