Squeaking

[sechs]

There's a squeaking noise coming from the equipment at the back of my office.

Initially, I thought this was the cylinder on my chair giving out, but after a few weeks of this seemingly random noise, I've surmised that it's probably coming from my NAS and not the cordless phone base, stereo, router, DSL modem, or UPS. Any reason to believe otherwise?

Presuming that it is coming from the NAS, it's probably one of the drives. They all report good SMART. What on earth might be the cause and meaning of such a noise?


Thanks

 

[ddrueding]

The other possible contender would be the UPS, I've had a number of them emit strange sounds at random. You might try isolating between the two before you start tearing apart your NAS.

 

[Bozo]

Does the NAS have a fan inside?

Bozo :joker:

 

[CityK]

Maybe you have bats in the walls.

I'm not kidding either -- I once lived at a place that had just such. My roommates and I started hearing squeaking sounds and what not. It, first, took a while to figure out exactly where the sounds were coming from, and then, second, even more time to identify the actual source. This was in the middle of a cold winter. As it warmed up, they got a little more chirpy..and started getting more active, moving around into the interior walls. There was one door frame in particular I remember that you could hear them crawling around. One eventually found its way out somehow (small hole in the wall behind a wardrobe in one roommates room) and into the house proper. That was a hilarious night (given we had all just come back from a club all liquored up). After about an hours worth of pandemonium, it flew out the front door, (and likely went straight around the side of the house and back into the walls again via an opening that they had discovered). Pure comedy I tell you.

 

[sechs]

The other possible contender would be the UPS, I've had a number of them emit strange sounds at random. You might try isolating between the two before you start tearing apart your NAS.

The UPS is a possibility. The NAS has started reporting apparently bogus information concerning the charge status of the UPS; then again, there is apparent contention between Belkin UPSes and my Infrant NAS. I'll try to bring a laptop over to the UPS and see what kind of detailed information I can get from it.

If it's the UPS, what in the heck might this noise mean?

 

[sechs]

Does the NAS have a fan inside?

Yes. It's a Scythe S-flex which has been in use for about four months.

 

[sechs]

Maybe you have bats in the walls.

More likely, it'd be squirrels.

Since there's no scratching noises, and the squeak or squeal sound is extremely intermittent (less than five times a day, so far), I don't think that it's a creature in the wall. The noise is so clear sounding, the source almost assuredly had to be *in* the room. As I said earlier, I initially thought that the noise was coming from the cylinder in the chair in which I was sitting.

 

[Sol]

...the squeak or squeal sound is extremely intermittent (less than five times a day, so far)... The noise is so clear sounding, the source almost assuredly had to be *in* the room.

Have you checked your smoke alarm batteries?

 

[sechs]

No, but they make a very distinctive beep, rather than the chirp that some make. The batteries are not much more than six-months old, so I'd hope that they're not going out....

 

[sechs]

So it turns out that the source of the sound was ultimately the UPS, although it got a lot quieter once I disconnected all of the devices. I'm guessing that the electronics went foo, and I wasn't getting good power; this was inducing the sound. Everything except for my cordless phone seems fine.

I convinced Belkin to replace it with one of their "enterprise" models for free. So, more power and more features for just the cost of sending the old one back. Minus the annoyance, I think that I'm still coming out ahead.

 

[ddrueding]

Excellent work sechs, were there any key words that encouraged them to give the upgrade?

 

[sechs]

The model that went south is discontinued, so the agent seemed pretty easy on choice of replacement. The big deal for me was, due to the shelves that I have this equipment on, having the plugs in the back versus on top is is much easier with which to deal.