OWC Mercury Pro Elite Dual noisy fan

[Cave Man]

OK, really frustrated with this enclosure. The fan is noisy as heck when it's powered on, but as soon as I take the fan out from the chassis it's dead quiet. Nothing I have tried gets rid of the buzzing from whatever is vibrating in the fan when it's inserted into the back of the drive. So, my question is, how much heat will two drives back to back generate without this fan? Too dangerous (i.e., drive failure)? This is for my Mac mini home theater and the two drives hold my movies and TV shows.

 

[martinm0]

I have this drive (and also OWC's Thunderbay 4 enclosure). The Thunderbay is extremely noisy. And for no good reason that I can find. It's a lot of chassis noise (the HDDs are noisy as well).

That said, I had this device first and then picked up the Mercury Elite Pro. Knowing that the Thunderbay was loud, I bought one of Noctua's small fans to replace the stock one in the Mercury enclosure. It's still louder than I want.

I have thought about taking the fan out entirely. I think the drives would actually be fine, but it's the RAID controller and other electronics that I'd be more worried about.

What about taking out the fan, but then setting up a larger 92mm or 120mm fan in the front or rear to push/pull air through?

I'm really just using my enclosures for ad hoc backups so they are not running constantly. I've recently put Cat6 in the basement so I can also just put them out of the way and the noise is not an issue. But for the money this cases cost, I'm disappointed with their noise levels.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

OK, really frustrated with this enclosure. The fan is noisy as heck when it's powered on, but as soon as I take the fan out from the chassis it's dead quiet. Nothing I have tried gets rid of the buzzing from whatever is vibrating in the fan when it's inserted into the back of the drive.

I'm willing to bet that the cheap fan that OWC put in the Mercury Pro enclosure doesn't have any anti-vibration pads.

If it's a standard size fan (40mm, 60mm, 80mm, 92mm, etc.), you should be able to find anti-vibration pads or a gasket online (I know Amazon carries such things). They're usually made out of silicone and will only set you back a few bucks. If you have a thin sheet of silicone (or maybe felt) you might be able to fabricate makeshift pads yourself. They would likely be inside the case so not a total eyesore.

It was the same story with my Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box 650. The case fan didn't have any anti-vibration pads. Since it was a standard 120mm fan I replaced it with a much better and quieter Noctua NF-S12A.

 

[outis16]

Good to know. I've been tempted to replace the three Elite Pro single-bay enclosures of various vintages I'm running now with one of their multi-bay models, but no longer. The singles don't have fans, and are essentially noiseless.

 

[MHenr]

Fans are pretty cheap. Measure it and search for a silent replacement fan (Noctua is a trusted brand with PC builders).

And like others have mentioned, use some kind of shock absorbing material between the fan housing and the screw so it's not directly touching the enclosure to prevent vibration noise.
Some fans even have rubberised housings, so these take care of that out of the box.

Fans are the Nr1 source of older devices becoming noisy.
It's a super easy and usually cheap fix.