Fan replacement in Terastation

A couple months ago I bought a Buffalo Terastation. It's a bit on the expensive side for 750GB of storage (1TB in RAID-5 configuration), but it mostly satisfied my desire for a hassle-free, turnkey storage appliance.

Mostly. Two weeks ago it started accessing the hard drives constantly, and loudly. I unplugged the network cable. Drive access sounds continued. Hmm. Was it doing a RAID array check? No. Did it, uh, like catch a virus or something? No.

It turned out the power supply fan was rattling. This is a $1.99 part inside a $700 device. Since that device, moreover, was now holding hundreds of gigabytes of my precious data, I didn't really feel like mailing it back to Buffalo for repair.

My only option was to replace the fan. I guessed that it was an 80x25mm case fan with a 3-pin power connector, so I bought one at my local grocery-store-turned-computer-retailer. I disassembled the Terastation, removing all 240 screws (OK, I exaggerate. There are only 180 screws). I took apart the power supply and discovered that the fan actually had a 2-pin power connector -- it was missing the yellow connector that I suspect is for speed monitoring. So I clipped the old fan's connector and soldered it to the new one. I reassembled everything (well, almost everything; I had one piece left over at the end that now sits next to the Terastation), plugged it back in, and it worked, quietly.

So if your Terastation's fan starts acting up, and you're comfortable soldering wires together, this is a straightforward repair job. Other than the soldering, it's no more difficult than a drive replacement, which the user manual describes how to do.