I truly underestimated how much noise it would generate when I first laid my hands on a NAS. Even before it arrived, I prepared an area for it right on my desk, which sits in my bedroom. The first time the NAS spun up, I knew that it would make sleeping with the NAS running inconvenient.

That low hum may feel like white noise, but it became particularly difficult to ignore when I wanted to focus. That’s when I decided to do something about the noise. The NAS no longer sits on my desk, but I still experimented with a few small tweaks to make it less intrusive for those in the living room, where the NAS now sits. Here they are:

6 Replacing stock fans with quieter ones

Aftermarket solutions can save the day

The biggest culprit in a noisy NAS is often the stock fans. They are meant to maintain the airflow inside the NAS, but they aren’t always the most efficient ones, forcing them to work harder and, as a result, make more noise. Finding and replacing them with better fans, ones that can circulate more air but without spinning too hard, helped.

Noctua ones are what I got myself, but there are plenty of other brands and generic models that you can pick. Just make sure they fit your NAS’s size and power requirements. After replacing them, I noticed that the drive temperature had come down by a couple of degrees, and hence the noise too.

5 Adjusting fan speeds

Maybe a software tweak can fix things

Usually, NAS makers ship their systems with auto-adjust fan speed enabled, meaning the fans will spin faster (and louder) when it feels like heat is ramping up a lot. But if you feel like the fans are constantly spinning at their full speed and buzzing your desk, there is a chance that they are set to do exactly that.

Double-check your NAS settings to ensure that they are set to auto, so that they spin down when the system is running cooler. And if you know that the NAS is placed in a well-ventilated or air-conditioned area, you can choose to set the fans to run in quiet mode to reduce the constant hum.

4 Swap out HDDs for SSDs

Only if your budget allows

Since I had a couple of spare SATA SSDs lying around, I could experiment with an all-SSD setup, and the results were fascinating. While it sure gave me a transfer speed bump, I was impressed by how silent the NAS sounded. We don’t often realize that a lot of the spinning sound and clicks are from the HDDs, which use moving disks to store your data. SSDs, on the other hand, don’t have any moving parts.

But SSDs don’t come cheap, especially when you compare them to a NAS hard drive’s per GB cost. A middle ground is a hybrid setup of sorts where you move your most actively accessed data to the SSDs. That way, you improve not only the transfer speeds but also reduce your reliance on hard drives, and thereby the noise from their spinning.

3 Relocating the NAS

Your NAS needs to breathe, too

It sounds so obvious, yet most of us just gloss over this critical step. I decided to move my NAS only because of the noise issue, but I also got better performance as a result. My home’s living room is better ventilated, and the larger area traps less heat — both of which are excellent for your NAS.

Moving your NAS out of a cabinet shelf closed on all sides except one and to a more open space will give it more breathing space to run cooler naturally, without the fans firing up every few minutes. In fact, before you buy anything new to help reduce your NAS’s noise, try moving it first. It might work wonders without you needing to spend anything.

2 Keeping it dust-free

Clean up your NAS often

Open those drive bays every few weeks and check if dust has accumulated around the vents, on the fans, and drives. You can use compressed air cans to blow out the dust or simply wipe it manually. But you must frequently check and clean up the clogged fan blades and vents that affect airflow. This will save the motors from overstraining and running noisier.

I was too late to realize this. When I ultimately noticed that the fans had slowly gotten noisier and the NAS was running hotter than before, I went into inspection mode only to find a thick layer of dust over all the NAS’s internals. Thank goodness it didn’t cause any other problems than just noise and heat.

1 Checking drive health

The sound of their end time

One of the two drives on my NAS system started to fail, and the peculiar HDD noise was a significant reason why I discovered the issue in time and was able to save the data. Healthy drives have a predictable whir sound and occasional click, but the failing ones sound rough, sometimes with a knocking sound added to the mix.

While it’s recommended to routinely run drive health checks to ensure data integrity, it becomes even more crucial to run these checks when you hear abnormal sounds coming from your NAS. If you spot the problem early on, there is a better chance of saving your data by replacing the drive and even reducing the noise.

The literal peace of mind

I got my NAS to afford me some peace of mind by bringing all my files scattered across cloud services and portable drives to a single location and making their access easier, no matter the device I am on. But there is a second kind of peace of mind — the literal one, where your NAS doesn’t give you a headache with its constant buzz. If your NAS is also giving you a literal headache with its unbearable noise, it might be time to run these checks.