I bought this to extend my ever growing need of space (all of my photographs are shot in RAW). Right now it’s housing 2x3tb connected over eSATA to my B3 (small home server). The first thing that struck me when I turned on the ICY BOX was how incredibly loud it was. I’m very sensitive to sound and noise, so I couldn’t possibly live with that kind of monster in my living room. So I decided to replace the fan.

Thankfully, RaidSonic (ICY BOX designer/manufacturer) has made this very easy:

1. You simply remove the fan, it’s a 2 pin connector (don’t ask me).  And then you…
2. Buy a silent fan. I picked up the Noctua R-8, which is incredibly silent.
3. Most fans that you can buy come with a 3 pin or 4 pin connector. This might scare you, but in this case it doesn’t matter.
4. Splice the cables, and use the connector from the previous fan. Be sure to check and remember which cable goes where. In my case, the yellow was the red. Twine the new fan’s cable with the old one. Put some tape around the naked metal.
5. Insert new fan. Make sure that no cable end up close to the fans blade.
6. Tidy up.
7. Done!

For me, I would have returned the ICY BOX if I had been unable to fix the noise. Thankfully it worked out, and now the HDD’s sounds more than the ICY BOX fan. One thing that I learned from this was how analog fans are. It’s just a small electric motor, and because of this, their cables are really simple. Just like a speaker cable.