The fan on my fw800 is always on, it has 3 1tb wd green and 500gb wd green, and what seems good airflow, i blew out the dustbunnies last week, but it doesn’t seem to have made much difference, any idea how i can make the fan less noisy?
How long have you had the Drobo? From my experience its very quiet and the fan rarely comes on full unless its relaying data or its just booting up. Has the fan always been on full or is it happening just this last week or so?
Do you have the same loud fan noise when the drives are removed from the Drobo?
My Drobo v1.0 is a bit noisy. (I had actually ordered a v2.0, but TigerDirect sent me a v1.0 … another story for another time.) Anyways, I knew the v1.0 was going to be bit noisy. For the most part, I can live with it. Normally, my Drobo is on 24/7. I go days and days without accessing it except to update my music, movie, or document libraries. However, sometimes–during these idle/no access periods–the fans sound like a jumbo jet engine. It is so noisy I use the Drobo Dashboard to put it in standby. It goes all quiet, and I can once again hear myself think.
Oh, I run the unit without its magnetic front cover plate. The vibration from it was worse than the fan sound for me. Hmmm … maybe if I damp the vibration sound and put the cover back on, maybe it will reduce the fan noise.
had the drobo a year, its always chugging away, its not worrying, just sounds like my heating boiler…i just dont get why the fan is always spinning, the airflow is fine around it
I must say, mine is also very loud. Sometimes I give it a little touch and the noise reduces. But then it gets loud again.
If your Drobo is out of warranty, a new $10 fan will solve it (it did for mine). I replaced the fan with a Noctua NF-B9
http://noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=16&lng=en
Just unscrew the legs (4 screws) and the holding screw for the outer case. Then slide open the chassis - you’ll probably need to use pliers to unlock the sliding hooks. Then unscrew the fan and replace it with the new one. Splice the power leads and put the case back together. 20 min all up.
I actually went as far as to remove the entire rear plastic faceplate on my out of warranty Drobo v1 and mounted a 120mm fan there instead… more airflow at lower rpms, less noise… much happier than I was with my previous swap of the 92mm fan. It ain’t pretty, but I don’t need to see it, and I certainly don’t want to hear it.
[quote=“syd, post:7, topic:289”]If your Drobo is out of warranty, a new $10 fan will solve it (it did for mine). I replaced the fan with a Noctua NF-B9
http://noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=16&lng=en
Just unscrew the legs (4 screws) and the holding screw for the outer case. Then slide open the chassis - you’ll probably need to use pliers to unlock the sliding hooks. Then unscrew the fan and replace it with the new one. Splice the power leads and put the case back together. 20 min all up.
[/quote]
Cool! I left the rear plastic plate off too - but I didn’t go as far as the 120mm fan! Maybe next upgrade.
My gen 1 Drobo WAS noisy when it had Seagate drives. After replacing them with WD Green 1 TB’s the fan hardly came on at all. And then only in the summer.