I have a bit of a dilemma with my DIY NAS rig.
Does your setup have any way to do noise insulation? I suspect the answer is no but figured I'd throw it out there, surprisingly noise insulation helps more than you'd think. I have a bunch of drives inside a desktop case with insulation panels built in and the drives themselves are in there with rubber anti vibration screws/mounts. Barely ever hear anything from the drives (granted my WD Reds are probably quieter than your current Seagates).
Just something to think on whether it's an option for your current NAS rig or a future configuration.
Sorry... are you talking about piracy or privacy? They're different things, you start off referring to piracy but most of your post is about privacy :P
Anyways I've never considered Lemmy as a "privacy" platform so it's not really how or why I ended up here. Most Lemmy instances don't even allow Tor usage, some block VPN usage too, and most require an email to sign up and register. On top of that each Lemmy instance is going to be as private as the instance admin is willing to make it.