Robi_G
New member
D-Link NAS Mod
This mod started off as a fix for the cooling issues brought about by an old, hot running hard drive and an enclosure with crap airflow, but turned into something a bit more than that. Scroll down for finished pics or read on for more a more detailed build. (will post pics in the dark with it all lit up later on today).
Here's the NAS to begin with, meh performance and meh looks, the gloss really shows up the dust (and makes it a pig to photograph) but it got me started with fileservers and was cheap so I'm not knocking it that much.
As you can see, the combination of a tiny, noisy and generally bad in every way 40mm fan along with an enclosed space with a hot running 7-year-old hard drive was not good news. It would sit at 43C which in my opinion a hard drive should not run at and every day I would leave for school with it on, and I'd get back and it'd be off. I assumed this was because of the heat.
Now for the first modification I wasn't planning on doing anything big so no photos of the processes. I cut a hole in the roof and hot glued some mesh and filter material I had lying around and the temperatures dropped from 43C to 34C, which I thought was bloody brilliant for such a simple job.
I also got some rough sandpaper and went across the roof to 1: Hide the marks made from the workbench and 2: Get rid of the annoying gloss finish. It went ok, not the brushed aluminium finish I'd hoped for but it looks good in pictures. And who says roughened plastic can't be a thing
After unscrewing a not insignificant number of screws, I found a rather interesting way of getting the light from the LEDs to where it's needed, not complicated but just interesting.
Not only this, I realised that some of the front panel was translucent , which until you took the thing off wouldn't have been noticed. Anyone thinking what I'm thinking?
I started experimenting with different light arrangements in the front and the roof with some LED strips I had lying around, they all look pretty similar in the photos but I decided on one strip in the bottom front and to leave the ones in the roof for when the window was cut so that they could be hidden away from sight. I still wasn't sure how I would power them though as the testing had been done with a 9v.
The panels before and after cutting, you can see in the last one one of the reasons I sanded the roof panel down.
The D-Link logo looking slightly worse for wear, many thanks to them for making a NAS that's so easy to cut through.
I knocked the spring off the roof release mechanism when wiping the body panel down and instead of thinking about the problem went headfirst into it and put it back on wrong, although it's a lot snappier now so the use of 'wrong' might itself be wrong in this case.
Here's some testing of the lights with the window cut. Apart from the temporary crocodile clips and the edge of the strip where it hasn't been fixed down, everything is out of sight.
Since starting this I have also come to understand the people who seem to have tons of stuff 'just lying around', before now I could never understand how so much useful stuff could just accumulate, but it just does.
Tah dah! Since the last LED testing I soldered the lights into the NAS power supply and found that I had to take the LED strip in the main body of the case out and stick it to the side of the 'data + power' socket on the motherboard else it would've blocked everything from going in, the rest of the body has also been sanded down with the same result as last time.
//EDIT//
Dark pics:
From this I reckon I should spray the inside a nicer colour (probably black) and after that maybe do a cutout to block up the unsightly holes you can see through the front panel. Although I'm unsure whether or not to keep the front panel lit as it does look a bit messy
This mod started off as a fix for the cooling issues brought about by an old, hot running hard drive and an enclosure with crap airflow, but turned into something a bit more than that. Scroll down for finished pics or read on for more a more detailed build. (will post pics in the dark with it all lit up later on today).
Here's the NAS to begin with, meh performance and meh looks, the gloss really shows up the dust (and makes it a pig to photograph) but it got me started with fileservers and was cheap so I'm not knocking it that much.
As you can see, the combination of a tiny, noisy and generally bad in every way 40mm fan along with an enclosed space with a hot running 7-year-old hard drive was not good news. It would sit at 43C which in my opinion a hard drive should not run at and every day I would leave for school with it on, and I'd get back and it'd be off. I assumed this was because of the heat.
Now for the first modification I wasn't planning on doing anything big so no photos of the processes. I cut a hole in the roof and hot glued some mesh and filter material I had lying around and the temperatures dropped from 43C to 34C, which I thought was bloody brilliant for such a simple job.
I also got some rough sandpaper and went across the roof to 1: Hide the marks made from the workbench and 2: Get rid of the annoying gloss finish. It went ok, not the brushed aluminium finish I'd hoped for but it looks good in pictures. And who says roughened plastic can't be a thing
After unscrewing a not insignificant number of screws, I found a rather interesting way of getting the light from the LEDs to where it's needed, not complicated but just interesting.
Not only this, I realised that some of the front panel was translucent , which until you took the thing off wouldn't have been noticed. Anyone thinking what I'm thinking?
I started experimenting with different light arrangements in the front and the roof with some LED strips I had lying around, they all look pretty similar in the photos but I decided on one strip in the bottom front and to leave the ones in the roof for when the window was cut so that they could be hidden away from sight. I still wasn't sure how I would power them though as the testing had been done with a 9v.
The panels before and after cutting, you can see in the last one one of the reasons I sanded the roof panel down.
The D-Link logo looking slightly worse for wear, many thanks to them for making a NAS that's so easy to cut through.
I knocked the spring off the roof release mechanism when wiping the body panel down and instead of thinking about the problem went headfirst into it and put it back on wrong, although it's a lot snappier now so the use of 'wrong' might itself be wrong in this case.
Here's some testing of the lights with the window cut. Apart from the temporary crocodile clips and the edge of the strip where it hasn't been fixed down, everything is out of sight.
Since starting this I have also come to understand the people who seem to have tons of stuff 'just lying around', before now I could never understand how so much useful stuff could just accumulate, but it just does.
Tah dah! Since the last LED testing I soldered the lights into the NAS power supply and found that I had to take the LED strip in the main body of the case out and stick it to the side of the 'data + power' socket on the motherboard else it would've blocked everything from going in, the rest of the body has also been sanded down with the same result as last time.
//EDIT//
Dark pics:
From this I reckon I should spray the inside a nicer colour (probably black) and after that maybe do a cutout to block up the unsightly holes you can see through the front panel. Although I'm unsure whether or not to keep the front panel lit as it does look a bit messy
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