The late XV105
9th Jun 2011, 16:42
Some of you know that I always have to have an IT-related project on the go. The current one however is a bit unusual.
Background
One of my previous projects mentioned in this forum was to put the RAID1 NAS that is one layer of my data backup strategy, in my garage. The NAS is connected to the home network via buried gigabit ethernet running in protected shield, and the garage and home are earth bonded together in case of lightning strike to either building; hopefully the kit at either end won't get fried. Because the brick-built garage is an unheated outbuilding that gets cold and clammy in the winter and hot and potentially dusty in the summer, I needed to find a way of affording the NAS reasonable environment protection. I did this as follows:
Purchased a Western Digital MyBook World Edition II for the NAS since it uses Green Caviar HDDs with very low energy consumption and therefore relatively low heat generation; so low in fact, that the NAS does without a cooling fan. It was also relatively low cost if my idea didn't work
Purchased a large (60cm x 40cm x 40cm) plastic storage box with snap-on lid in which to house the physically small NAS (not much bigger than two 3.5" SATA HDDs mounted as a sandwich because that is almost exactly what it is). The only holes are two cut-outs in the side of the lid that precisely match the radius of the power supply and ethernet cables. No dust, moisture, or creepy-crawly gets in.
Placed a 1TB USB HDD (used for media streaming) adjacent to the NAS and with as much air gap between the two as I could get
Taught myself the basics of Busybox Linux and use of WinSCP to hack the NAS and write scripts to; monitor HDD temperature via SMART every 15 minutes; send an e-mail and shut down the NAS if either HDD exceeds 56 deg C (max operating temp according to WD is 60 deg C); write a date and time stamped log file entry for each HDD every four hours so I can look for any odd temperature trends or variations between the two; send an e-mail on reboot and let me know if it was after a controlled or power-failure shut down
All hunky dory, great fun to design, learn, and implement, and working beautifully for the vast majority of the time. In winter, even when the garage air temperature immediately adjacent to the enclosure was -6 deg C, the air temperature inside the enclosure was a nice and snug 19 deg C with the HDDs idling at 31 deg C. For most of the year the HDDs idle at about 40 deg C and reach the low fifties when running flat out for a sustained period.
Problem
In summer evenings when the sun is directly cooking the garage, the ambient air temperature adjacent to the enclose can exceed 40 deg C (42 max seen), the HDDs then exceed 56 deg C, and the NAS tells me this fact via that e-mail and then shuts down nicely. My solution today is to switch the NAS back on (or have my wife do so if I am abroad since she gets the e-mail too!) and leave the enclosure lid ajar by a couple of cm at one end. Overheating never occurs in this scenario but it does let dust, moisture, and insects in.
Challenge
How to cool the NAS without fans and filters drawing outside air in to the box and then expelling it?
I want to keep a humidity and dust-tight enclosure that I don't have to fiddle with according to the season, or clean and maintain. To me this implies heat soaks and perhaps sitting the enclosure in a bowl that holds water during the summer (okay, so there is a small amount of maintenance here!) or blowing a table top fan against it, but I'd love to hear some credible and sensible suggestions, please.
For the record the current enclosure is gloss black plastic with opaque lid and it sits on top of a two metre high metal cabinet. The NAS is *NOT* against the wall being cooked by the evening sun.
Yes, I can "buy" another 4 deg C by pushing the shut down threshold to the HDD design limit but I'd rather not do this and in any case don't feel that it is enough on its own.
Background
One of my previous projects mentioned in this forum was to put the RAID1 NAS that is one layer of my data backup strategy, in my garage. The NAS is connected to the home network via buried gigabit ethernet running in protected shield, and the garage and home are earth bonded together in case of lightning strike to either building; hopefully the kit at either end won't get fried. Because the brick-built garage is an unheated outbuilding that gets cold and clammy in the winter and hot and potentially dusty in the summer, I needed to find a way of affording the NAS reasonable environment protection. I did this as follows:
Purchased a Western Digital MyBook World Edition II for the NAS since it uses Green Caviar HDDs with very low energy consumption and therefore relatively low heat generation; so low in fact, that the NAS does without a cooling fan. It was also relatively low cost if my idea didn't work
Purchased a large (60cm x 40cm x 40cm) plastic storage box with snap-on lid in which to house the physically small NAS (not much bigger than two 3.5" SATA HDDs mounted as a sandwich because that is almost exactly what it is). The only holes are two cut-outs in the side of the lid that precisely match the radius of the power supply and ethernet cables. No dust, moisture, or creepy-crawly gets in.
Placed a 1TB USB HDD (used for media streaming) adjacent to the NAS and with as much air gap between the two as I could get
Taught myself the basics of Busybox Linux and use of WinSCP to hack the NAS and write scripts to; monitor HDD temperature via SMART every 15 minutes; send an e-mail and shut down the NAS if either HDD exceeds 56 deg C (max operating temp according to WD is 60 deg C); write a date and time stamped log file entry for each HDD every four hours so I can look for any odd temperature trends or variations between the two; send an e-mail on reboot and let me know if it was after a controlled or power-failure shut down
All hunky dory, great fun to design, learn, and implement, and working beautifully for the vast majority of the time. In winter, even when the garage air temperature immediately adjacent to the enclosure was -6 deg C, the air temperature inside the enclosure was a nice and snug 19 deg C with the HDDs idling at 31 deg C. For most of the year the HDDs idle at about 40 deg C and reach the low fifties when running flat out for a sustained period.
Problem
In summer evenings when the sun is directly cooking the garage, the ambient air temperature adjacent to the enclose can exceed 40 deg C (42 max seen), the HDDs then exceed 56 deg C, and the NAS tells me this fact via that e-mail and then shuts down nicely. My solution today is to switch the NAS back on (or have my wife do so if I am abroad since she gets the e-mail too!) and leave the enclosure lid ajar by a couple of cm at one end. Overheating never occurs in this scenario but it does let dust, moisture, and insects in.
Challenge
How to cool the NAS without fans and filters drawing outside air in to the box and then expelling it?
I want to keep a humidity and dust-tight enclosure that I don't have to fiddle with according to the season, or clean and maintain. To me this implies heat soaks and perhaps sitting the enclosure in a bowl that holds water during the summer (okay, so there is a small amount of maintenance here!) or blowing a table top fan against it, but I'd love to hear some credible and sensible suggestions, please.
For the record the current enclosure is gloss black plastic with opaque lid and it sits on top of a two metre high metal cabinet. The NAS is *NOT* against the wall being cooked by the evening sun.
Yes, I can "buy" another 4 deg C by pushing the shut down threshold to the HDD design limit but I'd rather not do this and in any case don't feel that it is enough on its own.