HDD noise levels table/list

Last updated on 04 Nov 2024 📧 Subscribe

What are the Quietest hard drives (HDD)

Help Us Build a Database of Hard Drive Noise Levels

We are collecting audio recordings of different hard drives to build a comprehensive database of noise levels. If you have a hard drive, we’d love for you to contribute!

Please send us a recording of your hard drive and include the following details:

  • Brand: The manufacturer of your hard drive (e.g., Seagate, Western Digital).
  • Model: The model number of your hard drive (e.g., WD10EZEX).
  • Distance: The distance from the hard drive at which the recording was made (e.g., 10 cm). Booting/ inactive/ active

Your contributions will help create a valuable resource for others to compare hard drive noise levels.


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Share HDD noise levels with NAS community!
Toshiba E300HDWA120EZSTAboot2TB2 inches 28.2 dB(A))

 

 

 

Seagate pipeline 500GB

WD Red 4TB [WD40EFRX]

WD Red 3TB [WD30EFRX]

WD Red 1TB [WD10EFRX]

Seagate Skyhawk Surveillance 14TB [ST14000VX0008]

Seagate Ironwolf 4TB [ST4000VN008]

Seagate Hard Drive at 8TB

and HERE is an UNHEALTHY WD 3.5″ Hard Drive:

As you can tell, if you know what to listen for, they suddenly become very distinct.

 

Here is list from Hardwareluxx
Seagate IronWolf Pro 20 TB [ST20000NTOO1] – Sample #1

Seagate IronWolf Pro 20 TB [ST20000NTOO1] – Sample #2

Toshiba MG10 HDD2 [20TB] MG10ACA20TE

Seagate Exos X X20 [20 TB] – ST20000NM007D

Seagate IronWolf Pro 22 TB [ST22000NT001]

Seagate IronWolf Pro 20 TB [ST20000NE000]

Seagate Skyhawk 4 TB [ST4000VX015/16]

Synology HAT3300 [4 TB] – Sample #1

Synology HAT3300 [4 TB] – Sample #2

Synology HAT5300 [16 TB]

Toshiba MG06 [8 TB] – MG06ACA800E

Toshiba MG08-D [4 TB] – MG08ADA400E

Toshiba MG09 [18 TB] mit MAMR – MG09ACA18TE

Toshiba MG10 HDD1 [20 TB] – MG10ACA20TE

Toshiba N300 [8 TB]

Toshiba S300 [4 TB]

Toshiba X300 [18 TB]

WD Purple Pro [18 TB] – WD181PURP

WD Red Plus [8 TB] – WD80EFAX

WD Red Pro [16 TB] – WD161KFGX

WD_BLACK [8 TB] – WD8001FZBX

Western Digital Gold [18 TB] – WD181KRYZ

Western Digital WD Red Pro [18 TB] – WD Red Pro KFGX

Synology HAT5300 Soundcheck [8 TB]

Toshiba MG10AFA22TE [22 TB]

Toshiba MG10D [8 TB]

Toshiba N300 [16 TB]

WD Red Pro [24 TB] – WD240KFGX

 

WD Red Plus 4TB WD40efzx HDD Noise Level Test

 

WD Red HDD Noise Level Test – 4TB WD40EFRX

 

 

 

 

WD Red Pro HDD Noise Level Test – 8TB WD8003FFBX

 

Synology NAS HAT5300 HDD – 8TB

 

Western Digital UltraStar HDD Noise Level Test DC HC330 – 10TB

 

 

Seagate Ironwolf NAS HDD Noise Level Test – 14TB

 

 

 

 

 

Seagate Ironwolf Pro HDD Noise Level Test – 14TB

 

 

 

 

Seagate EXOS Data Center HDD Noise Level Test – 14TB

 

 

Seagate Barracuda Pro 14TB HDD Noise Level Test 

 

WD Red Pro 20TB HDD

 

 

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB NT Drives

 

WD Ultrastar HC560 20TB Hard Drive

 

 

WD Red Pro 22TB Hard Drive

 

 

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB HDD

 

 

 

WD, Seagate, HGST, Toshiba noise level comparison

The Quietest 1TB drive= Western Digital AV-GP 1TB (Noise level 28.2 dB(A))

The Quietest 2TB drive= Toshiba E300  (Noise level 28.2 dB(A))

The Quietest 3TB drive= Western Digital Red (Noise level 28.8 dB(A))

The Quietest 4TB drive=Western Digital Blue (Noise level 28.8 dB(A))

The Quietest 5TB drive=Western Digital Green (Noise level 33.5 dB(A))

The Quietest 6TB drive=HGST Ultrastar He6 (Noise level 23.8 dB(A))

The Quietest 8TB drive=Western Digital Red (Noise level 22.5 dB(A))

The Quietest 10TB drive=Western Digital Red (Noise level 21.7 dB(A))

The Quietest 12TB drive=Western Digital Gold (Noise level 23.3 dB(A))

(Source)

(Source)

 (source)



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415 thoughts on “HDD noise levels table/list”

  4. Hi NAS! I am a sound designer from the UK and I need to record lots of retro tech for a project. Vintage hard drives, floppy drives, whatever makes those wonderful old ‘retro-future’ technology sounds as heard in Alien, Blade Runner etc. the project is a library of such sounds and is not commercially funded but if you have such a collection of items and were available to be wrangler while I recorded them I could give you a contribution for your time! And obvs you can have the sounds if they are use to you. Let me know if thats something you might be interested in. Many thanks
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  8. Is the Seagate IronWolf Pro 24TB drive compatible with the Synology DS1618+ NAS? Synology only goes up to 20TB maximum drives in their compatibility list, however the spec sheet for the 1618+ does not reference a drive size limit, but rather a single volume limit, which is 108TB. Thanks
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  9. Idk, I have fractal design case that has at least some dampening and not many holes. These hard drive tests seem ok to me, just start up sounds are a bit louder, but compared to your voice, even Exos drives are quite ok. Although I’ve seen videos where two in NAS were like airplane going from taxiing to full power.
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  14. I think that taking only a little over a day to rebuild is actually very impressive for such a huge array. I remember builds taking that long back in the day using SCSI drives and the pool was gigabytes not terabytes.
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  15. Buyer beware. 22TB simply is not compatible.. I’ve just bought 2 of them and can’t use them on Synology and on my Terramaster. The Synology says can do it. and the Terramaster just locks up with solid green lights.
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  19. ????????Hey Mr can you urgently give me a quick answer about this I would really appreciate it: help me about buying a WD Ultrastar HDD (specifically hc550 18TB ) I hear from some users that it has a clicking sound every few seconds in idle mode I want to know if this idle sound is high & can be heard from inside the desktop PC chassis & be annoying or not ? I already own an Seagate Exos & I can say I’m accustomed to the it’s occasional noises , but not to a every 5 second click , how is this compared to mine ?! Can this be even quieter & my concern is nonsense ?;
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  20. I can’t believe how good this channel is. I’m now trying to figure out what I need. I think I want a DAS with raid and some expansion options in terms of extra bays. I’ve been out of the PC game for 10 years as I’m on Mac …I see they haven’t change much ???? which is a good thing for me.
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  21. I bought a Synology DS923+ NAS and I bought four WD Red Pro 20TB drives only to find out that DSM would not install with these drives. Ended up having to buy four Seagate Enox 20TB drives to get the Diskstation set up and running. How can I get the WD Red Pro drives initialied and formated so I can use them on a Windows 11 Pro system?
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  27. You saved me several times from buying enterprise level hdds which I thought would be better because of lower price and theoretical better performance, but which nobody says that are much much noisier and which is a very important point for a consumer. Now, which high capacity drive do you recommend me for having at home in a room where I do remote work most of the day? Thanks!
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  28. You saved me several times from buying enterprise level hdds which I thought would be better because of lower price and theoretical better performance, but which nobody says that are much much noisier and which is a very important point for a consumer. Now, which high capacity drive do you recommend me for having at home in a room where I do remote work most of the day? Thanks!
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  29. You saved me several times from buying enterprise level hdds which I thought would be better because of lower price and theoretical better performance, but which nobody says that are much much noisier and which is a very important point for a consumer. Now, which high capacity drive do you recommend me for having at home in a room where I do remote work most of the day? Thanks!
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  30. My WD80EFAX is so quite I barely hear it’s working. Can you tell if WD120EFBX is the same actually? Because the noise levels are somewhat identical on paper. The rotational speed is the same for both drives, though WD80EFAX stated as 5400 class it’s actually 7200 RPM drive, I guess….
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  34. I bought a second-hand 10TB Ultrastar-HCC510 – and then “by habit” tested it on a Desktop – with a 2021-model Motherboard from Asus.
    ..
    And, you will probably correct me – but, I was surpriced to discover, that it was not recognized.
    I then updated my bios to the latest – same result..

    I then got anxious – had the person sold a faulty drive to me…

    But .. – sorry, a Seagull distracted me, for a moment (I needed to load my shotgun, and try to hit it???? – which succeeded after some shots .. now I await the local police, since it is Denmark) – .. it works 100% on my NAS’es (Terramaster, Qnap).

    Being an amateur, and not having tried to put an “enterprise hdd” into a Desktop-PC before – I was surpriced!
    And, especially surpriced, because the drive is old, and could have been testes, by someone else, before me.

    (As it is, now, I have written to Asus – because, it is very okay, as an upgrade – to my PC’s 4TB file-storage & backup-drive (bought back in 2014 !!)).

    [regarding old drives (2014): I am triple-securing /backing-up all my data – so a failing HDD is not a (big/essential) problem for me… on my desktops]
    [actually, I have not had a HDD failing, since 1999…]
    [my oldest drives, currently still in use, is bought back in 2009! (!)]
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  35. I bought a second-hand 10TB Ultrastar-HCC510 – and then “by habit” tested it on a Desktop – with a 2021-model Motherboard from Asus.
    ..
    And, you will probably correct me – but, I was surpriced to discover, that it was not recognized.
    I then updated my bios to the latest – same result..

    I then got anxious – had the person sold a faulty drive to me…

    But .. – sorry, a Seagull distracted me, for a moment (I needed to load my shotgun, and try to hit it???? – which succeeded after some shots .. now I await the local police, since it is Denmark) – .. it works 100% on my NAS’es (Terramaster, Qnap).

    Being an amateur, and not having tried to put an “enterprise hdd” into a Desktop-PC before – I was surpriced!
    And, especially surpriced, because the drive is old, and could have been testes, by someone else, before me.

    (As it is, now, I have written to Asus – because, it is very okay, as an upgrade – to my PC’s 4TB file-storage & backup-drive (bought back in 2014 !!)).

    [regarding old drives (2014): I am triple-securing /backing-up all my data – so a failing HDD is not a (big/essential) problem for me… on my desktops]
    [actually, I have not had a HDD failing, since 1999…]
    [my oldest drives, currently still in use, is bought back in 2009! (!)]
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  36. I bought a second-hand 10TB Ultrastar-HCC510 – and then “by habit” tested it on a Desktop – with a 2021-model Motherboard from Asus.
    ..
    And, you will probably correct me – but, I was surpriced to discover, that it was not recognized.
    I then updated my bios to the latest – same result..

    I then got anxious – had the person sold a faulty drive to me…

    But .. – sorry, a Seagull distracted me, for a moment (I needed to load my shotgun, and try to hit it???? – which succeeded after some shots .. now I await the local police, since it is Denmark) – .. it works 100% on my NAS’es (Terramaster, Qnap).

    Being an amateur, and not having tried to put an “enterprise hdd” into a Desktop-PC before – I was surpriced!
    And, especially surpriced, because the drive is old, and could have been testes, by someone else, before me.

    (As it is, now, I have written to Asus – because, it is very okay, as an upgrade – to my PC’s 4TB file-storage & backup-drive (bought back in 2014 !!)).

    [regarding old drives (2014): I am triple-securing /backing-up all my data – so a failing HDD is not a (big/essential) problem for me… on my desktops]
    [actually, I have not had a HDD failing, since 1999…]
    [my oldest drives, currently still in use, is bought back in 2009! (!)]
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  37. Thank you for that video. I was struggling for weeks which drive i should get and was hoping to find the perfect balance between noise and capacity. You showed me i can buy this drive without having issues.
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  43. keep in mind if it’s on your desk you’ll probably hear it (in the desktop). I am curious to see if it would be noticeable. Mine can be kinda loud late at night and that’s annoying. (I sleep in the same room, but probably not for much longer) It’s a better idea to separate your spaces and then the noise doesn’t matter as much. I think Windows indexing it in the background can be especially noisy, but that’s just a guess.
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  44. I’m thinking of buying Exos or Ironwolf pro both 14tb. The Exos is $20 cheaper but I’m worried of the noise. I’m currently running 4tb Ironwolf.
    Any suggestions?
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  46. I have the 18TB version because Newegg had it on sale for under $400CAD. That’s only 22¢ per GB! I couldn’t say no to that because it’s the same price per GB as an 8TB WD Blue. That’s just insane!
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  47. You really need to STFU and get an editor. Basically it boils down to Ironwolf, Ironwolf Pro and Exos all produce the basically same amount of noise, but he claims they get lounder despite providing evidence to the contrary and spreading the information across two videos. Fucking useless.
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  48. I Have 3 Of The 12TB EXOS 16 Drives And 3 Of The EXOS 16 14TB Drives! I Have Never Been Able To Get 250MB/Second But Since i Am Using A USB3 Enclosure I Dont Think I Ever Will!! I Use These To Back Up All of My DVR’ed TV Shows That I Have Been Collecting Since I Built My 1st PC Back In 2005! That # Is In The 10’s Of Thousands Now! Since I Bought These Drives Refurbished I Expect 1 To Fail Anyday! But They Have Not! The Oldest drive Being In My Possession For 2+ Years!
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  55. Love you man! For the fact that you’re so passionate about what you do.
    I’m a bit on the fence over these drives. Luckily, the Swedish stores are clear on whether they’re NT or NE drives. My problem is that the Exos 7E8 (ST8000NM000A) and 7E10 (ST8000NM017B) drives cost 20-25% less than the Pro NT drives, at least on the Swedish market. The thing is, I’m not sure if it’s a no-brainer to just go for the Exos drives or if there are advantages to the Pro NT drives (that are relevant to me) that might make the higher price point worth it. I’m looking at 8TB drives to use internally in my PC. I already have a regular Ironwolf 8TB that I’ve had for a couple of years (ST8000VN0022, total TBW=40) and the plan was always to expand on that for extra space, speed and a bit of redundancy. The funny thing is that the 8TB Exos drives are even cheaper than the current gen regular Ironwolf drives (ST8000VN004). While I don’t really need more performance than the regular IW, because whichever drive I get it’s gonna be limited by the slightly older IW drive I already have, the Exos drives are actually cheaper… I do want durable drives to keep for many years to come. But then again, I don’t want drives that may be significantly noisier… But it doesn’t make sense to go for a _more expensive_ drive that is just quieter but slower (matters less though) and significantly less durable with the regular IW. That’s why I’m considering the IW Pro NT, because I’m suspecting they may be a bit quieter than the Exos drives and basically the same performance and durability (even though I’m performance capped).
    So, either I go maximum noise, performance and durability for the lowest price, or I go (hopefully) slightly quieter, same performance & durability for 25-30% more money…
    Another point that’s important to me, since they’re going internally in my PC, is that they need to handle being suspended in and waking up from sleep mode without issues. And I would assume the Exos drives handle that just as well as the other, but since Seagate is not even listing a power consumption rating for sleep/suspended mode I’m thinking there’s a slight chance they’re not well adapted for that, which makes me lean further toward the IW/IW Pro drives, which do have an official rating for that. And I’ve been moving back and forth on this for more than a year I think.
    I’m at my wits end and hoping you could offer some advice.
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  56. 14:08
    you telling me you don’t like computer noises? I have been silently desiring for my PCs to make IBM PC AT noises for months now. I would totally plug just a IBM PC AT audio emulation device into my SATA port in my Alienware if it meant I couldn’t use it for storage.

    also, per TB on average, HDDs are cheaper, but if you get a HDD and a SSD of equal storage number AND speed, you’re looking at pretty much the same price as I heard.
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  58. I want to share something about the noise and harmonics of these drives (WD221KFGX).
    I have two NAS: DS3622xs (10 x WD120EFAX & WD120EFBX)+ (and a DS923+ (3 x WD221KFGX). They are in different rooms so I can compare them.
    So yes, 5400rpm (12Tb) drives vs 7200rpm drives (22Tb) should not matter much..but. as much as I can work all day near my DS3622, I can’t even stay focused near the DS923+ with the 3x22Tb drives. I can even hear those drives seeking in another room. As much as my bigger NAS is office-silent, the smaller one is so noisy I’m thinking of putting it in the garage. Reminder to myself: dBA’s are -exponential- 🙁
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  63. My HC550 18Tb is quieter and faster than my red pro, and red plus, and way quieter than my WD Black.
    I run it bare on my desk as an archive drive. Only thing I have is a small usb fan to keep it cool. (Also keeps me cool.)

    I choose it for its durability, and reliability.
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  64. My HC550 18Tb is quieter and faster than my red pro, and red plus, and way quieter than my WD Black.
    I run it bare on my desk as an archive drive. Only thing I have is a small usb fan to keep it cool. (Also keeps me cool.)

    I choose it for its durability, and reliability.
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  65. My HC550 18Tb is quieter and faster than my red pro, and red plus, and way quieter than my WD Black.
    I run it bare on my desk as an archive drive. Only thing I have is a small usb fan to keep it cool. (Also keeps me cool.)

    I choose it for its durability, and reliability.
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  66. Its truly impressive how the Seagate Exos 7E8 seem more silent than even a Western Digital Red Plus when it comes to pure writing operations. The only problem soundwise seem to be happening once its reading & writing at the same time. It seems the only noise problems you will have when using this one PS4/PS5 system woul be on spinup. As idont think its made to read / write simontaneously? But correct me if im wrong here..? ????
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  72. A year later, the ‘sweet spot’ on pricing is at about 12-14 TB; I just got 2 ea brand new Exos 14 TB drives for $198 each…; can’t find WS Red Plus 10 TB drives for less than that…
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  78. Thanks for the noise test! I’d like to know, within a product line, how the noise increases as a function of storage capacity. Can you make a video about this with eg WD Red Plus from 8-20TB?
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  79. Thanks for the noise test! I’d like to know, within a product line, how the noise increases as a function of storage capacity. Can you make a video about this with eg WD Red Plus from 8-20TB?
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  80. Thanks for the noise test! I’d like to know, within a product line, how the noise increases as a function of storage capacity. Can you make a video about this with eg WD Red Plus from 8-20TB?
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  87. compared my 4TB WD black desktop drive, it’s not bad and honestly my WD black seems louder, although I prefer the deeper, crunchy sounds of the WD black compared to these higher pitched ticks
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  89. Great content, not sure if #5 is a pro, apparently a company out there that makes these hdd’s put a code in their program to give an error message to any hdd’s that’s been plugged in for a certain amount of time. Not sure if it’s this company but it should be easy to find here on YouTube.
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  90. The clicking sounds are absolutely terrible on these drives even though I have the low RPM variant, and I’m thinking of returning them. I have 4TB barracudas in my other PC that I can hardly even hear, but they are SMR drives and I wanted an upgrade.
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  92. Hello. I have an Asus Pro Ws x570-Ace motherboard. I want to upgrade to this hard drive. HC570 22tb. Windows 10 Pro. I want to connect to U2 with Sata mode.
    But wd says its only enterprise at support message. And Asus doesn’t guarantee compatibility. I don’t mind the noise. Workstation is on separated house compartment. Do you think it’s safe to buy it or should i spend more money on a gold version for example.
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  93. Hello. I have an Asus Pro Ws x570-Ace motherboard. I want to upgrade to this hard drive. HC570 22tb. Windows 10 Pro. I want to connect to U2 with Sata mode.
    But wd says its only enterprise at support message. And Asus doesn’t guarantee compatibility. I don’t mind the noise. Workstation is on separated house compartment. Do you think it’s safe to buy it or should i spend more money on a gold version for example.
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  94. Hello. I have an Asus Pro Ws x570-Ace motherboard. I want to upgrade to this hard drive. HC570 22tb. Windows 10 Pro. I want to connect to U2 with Sata mode.
    But wd says its only enterprise at support message. And Asus doesn’t guarantee compatibility. I don’t mind the noise. Workstation is on separated house compartment. Do you think it’s safe to buy it or should i spend more money on a gold version for example.
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  95. I have been looking at a bunch of drives and the exos are the cheapest by far price per tb wise. But the reviews are 50/50 going from “so loud you can hear it through walls” to “I can put my ear up to it without hearing much”
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  97. Hi I’m using the same exact sabrent dock you have and exos x20 20tb. But its not showing on my laptop legion 7 6th gen. What could be the problem or do I have to do something to make it show?
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  101. This test is very flawed because the drive obviously isn’t fully decoupled from your desk.
    I’ve watched your Seagate Exos video to compare the two and the Exos was decoupled 100%, not transferring any vibrations. The Ultrastar probably vibrates harder even when it’s idling, and some of that energy goes into your desk, creating a loud low frequency hum. I know this noise very well from using my own USB dock, that’s why I’ve put lots of foam padding under it.
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  109. Seagate warranty is a pile of SH*T…brand new 20tb Ironwolf pro (I have 30 of them) will not spin up and they want me to send in the motherboard specs to the server and two pc’s I hooked it to. They want screenshots of it hooked as a standalone drive and screenshots as as secondary drive. They want a video of the drive hooked to a pc so they can remotely diagnose why it will not spin. Needless to say they did not replace it.
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  110. You are much louder than the Seagate.
    Thx for the test, I think one way this can be more entertaining is that you compare your most silent hard drive (or a near contender) with the one in test, so can have some reference point.
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  111. Yes, I just bought two of these. I considered WD Ultrastore and Seagate Ironwolf, but I don’t want gimmicks like helium. I’ve always had good luck with WD, so I decided to trust them again.
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  112. Great comment of you mentioning as you go higher TB per drive, the noise of enterprise and non-enterprise comes close to each other (personally it’s indistinguishable for 16TB+). 
    LITERALLY NO ONE SAYS THIS
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  114. Helium is notoriously difficult to keep contained! no seal, not matter how perfect can keep it contained. Maybe if you weld the drive together, you might make a helium-proof case. So will the drive continue to work when all the helium leaks out after a few years?
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  115. Helium is notoriously difficult to keep contained! no seal, not matter how perfect can keep it contained. Maybe if you weld the drive together, you might make a helium-proof case. So will the drive continue to work when all the helium leaks out after a few years?
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  116. Helium is notoriously difficult to keep contained! no seal, not matter how perfect can keep it contained. Maybe if you weld the drive together, you might make a helium-proof case. So will the drive continue to work when all the helium leaks out after a few years?
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  117. Just for statistics for anyone:
    Bought 4 on 6th August last year and yesterday (22nd June) one stoped to report back to controller and is now a brick on it’s way to supplier. Good thing is that this drive has a 5 year warranty.
    Some additional info, the drive is laud. Technically it’s the same sound level that other drives have, however the transient is far more pronounced and is shakes the enclosure a lot.
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  118. Just for statistics for anyone:
    Bought 4 on 6th August last year and yesterday (22nd June) one stoped to report back to controller and is now a brick on it’s way to supplier. Good thing is that this drive has a 5 year warranty.
    Some additional info, the drive is laud. Technically it’s the same sound level that other drives have, however the transient is far more pronounced and is shakes the enclosure a lot.
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  119. Just for statistics for anyone:
    Bought 4 on 6th August last year and yesterday (22nd June) one stoped to report back to controller and is now a brick on it’s way to supplier. Good thing is that this drive has a 5 year warranty.
    Some additional info, the drive is laud. Technically it’s the same sound level that other drives have, however the transient is far more pronounced and is shakes the enclosure a lot.
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  128. (sorry about comment on a 2yr old video).
    To test hdd noise, you need to test with many small files, above 500KB, as very small files are kept in NTFS file table.
    Large files only cause seeks when saving name and attributes in MFT, then it will keep writing on continuous area. It would help if you can fragment the drive, fill it first with small files, remove some of them, then write other files. Ensure you have quite small amount of free space, to force it to seek areas which are free.
    Nowadays hdds are large, so it has plenty of free space, which helps keep fragmentation quite low.
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  130. I have a 5 bay Synology with all 18tb from the Best Buy shuck special, I’m building a second 5 bay and noise is an issue. I’m fine with my current setup however considering upgrading to Ultrastar 20tb or 22tb….would I see more noise compared to the wd or Ultrastar 18tb? Enough to avoid using if noise is an issue?
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  131. I have a 5 bay Synology with all 18tb from the Best Buy shuck special, I’m building a second 5 bay and noise is an issue. I’m fine with my current setup however considering upgrading to Ultrastar 20tb or 22tb….would I see more noise compared to the wd or Ultrastar 18tb? Enough to avoid using if noise is an issue?
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  132. I have a 5 bay Synology with all 18tb from the Best Buy shuck special, I’m building a second 5 bay and noise is an issue. I’m fine with my current setup however considering upgrading to Ultrastar 20tb or 22tb….would I see more noise compared to the wd or Ultrastar 18tb? Enough to avoid using if noise is an issue?
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  134. Are you doing the review on a boat lol, the seagulls are going nuts haha! Anyways, I’m getting this, but I heard it wont work on a PC cus its SAS or something, not SATA. I wonder whats the deal with that? Thats the only 1 they sell here from what the store owner said to me? Hmm.
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  135. Are you doing the review on a boat lol, the seagulls are going nuts haha! Anyways, I’m getting this, but I heard it wont work on a PC cus its SAS or something, not SATA. I wonder whats the deal with that? Thats the only 1 they sell here from what the store owner said to me? Hmm.
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  136. Are you doing the review on a boat lol, the seagulls are going nuts haha! Anyways, I’m getting this, but I heard it wont work on a PC cus its SAS or something, not SATA. I wonder whats the deal with that? Thats the only 1 they sell here from what the store owner said to me? Hmm.
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  139. Could you (or anyone) give any insight on how loud this drive would be compared to a WD Black HDD? I have a 3TB WD Black drive (from around 2015 or so) and its louder than any other hard drive that I’ve used (Some 1TB WD Blue’s, but mostly 2TB Barracudas), It’s not bothersome though, it’s not obscenely loud.

    I’ve been looking at either upgrading to a 8TB WD Blue, or one of these Seagate Exos X18 12TB drives because I can get them for a good price refurbished (refurbished doesn’t really concern me). But I see a good few people saying they’re loud, but my question is how loud, because it’s not like my WD Black is quiet. I looked up the rated acoustics for the Exos and my WD Black, and they’re supposedly in the same range, so at the moment I’m leaning towards the Exos.
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  140. excuse me, but forensic recovery does not make sense for a drive that will be in a raid array. if drive was to fail and it is a part of lets say raid 5, you would replace it with a fresh one and not bother with recovery. It would make sense if whole array would be corrupted, but then you are dealing with raid corruption and that would need different kind of recovery.
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  145. 8tb ironwolf no pro makes crazy old school noises. clunks and vibrates and i can feel easily it through my desk.
    its only 2 months old and it did it since day 1 – I think i should look into warranty. I spent more on the Ironwolf rather than getting the barracuda because i dont want failures. but making this much vibration and noise it cannot be good
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  154. It all depends on how much data you need to store and how often you need to use it.
    Mechanical HDD’s also benefit from technology progressing. So the gap is still there and I think it will be there for a long time.
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  157. Our company (a big corp IT monster) will not use Seagate Drives. The reliability we experienced in our SAN was very poor. So used examples will be even more unreliable.
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  159. I bought a 4TB a month ago as a back up. They have the top of the line durability & performance without the noise of a Exos but as I discovered they can get hotter than a Saturday arvo barby. So putting it in a heat dispersion cage should help. But finding one with its own built in fan would be epic. A word of warning, I found that Amazon sell these drives at a bargain however you have a 35% chance of getting one that is DOA, so I paid $20 more to get a local one that was heavily packed for delivery. I liked your review of the mach 2, where performance is similar to an SSD, that is unheard of.
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  161. Is it better to do the Exos or Ironwolf Pro or are they about the same? Does Exos also get data recovery? Been looking at both and hoping to get a first NAS. Many times the Exos is a bit cheaper than the Ironwolf Pro.
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  163. 20TB drives are pretty useless in a home/small business/nas environment. Rebuild times are ridiculous at these capacity’s. If you run 20 of these sucker ok but wtf are you doing with 20 of these at home?
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  164. Me and my company bought 10 of the 14 TB iron wolf pro NAS drives. 6 out of the group all had the notorious beeping power failure upon first boot and were rendered useless. Needless to say me, and my company will never buy a Seagate drive again.
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  166. These drives are crazy, they have the same MTBF and warranty as the Exos drives and such while being quieter, plus the data recovery service. Almost certainly the drive I”ll be going with if and when I can afford to get another NAS. Unless they come out with a 22TB that’s not stupidly expensive compared to these.
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  167. DEAL ALERT!! ‼Seagate 16TB IronWolf Pro NE drive is on sale on 250 USD best deal in a while ends Mar 31 – bh /amazon – other sizes are not quite as good price per TB. Honestly unless you a enterprise user or got a ton of cash, NT is way over what most people need, would you pay twice the price for your car if it lasted another 5 years?
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  171. Obviously, the solution is to run the cheapest, loudest, highest capacity enterprise HDD you can get your hands on … and run it externally in a 5 cm thick foam enclosure. 20TB, always ready, cheap as hell – and quiet as the day is long … from the outside. ????
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  185. 4x 22 TB gives you 66TB of storage in RAID, unless you are insane and do not use RAID. 😉 Technically, it is 5x 22TB, because again, unless you don’t really care about your data, you would have a spare lying in the shelf already. Or else you might freak out when the next supply chain issue hits and you cannot find a replacement for 5 weeks…
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  187. Some more info for the rest of us:
    If you want silence: WD140EFGX & WD120EFBX.
    But stay away from the WD 8TB red version, It seems the same on paper, but is night and day difference….

    My criteria to select/find silent hard drives are:
    • ≤29dB in use
    • ≤20dB in idle
    • ≤6.5W in use
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  188. I’m confused..; i saw so many times that the max capacity for a single volume that consumer NAS and docking station is 16tb per volume… but here 22tb (x4!!!) seems to work just fine and people in the comments mention 18tb being the sweet spot… are NAS and docking station compatible with more than 16tb despite the infos that they are not, that can be found often?
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  189. Thanks for this video! I thought i had a bad drive and was pissed since it was given to me as a gift in September and i only got around to putting data on it (late January). Its so loud! I have had bad experiences with seagate in the past and i typically only buy WD at this point. I think its gonna stay that way honestly.
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  193. Very nice review, thank you!
    You don’t recommend it for regular desktops or even home NAS but what other options are there when you want a 20TB drive?

    I currently own a few 10TB WD Red NAS drives but the HC560 20TB is at its lowest price in 6 months in my area so I am actually thinking about purchasing one.

    EDIT: I am out of physical space in my desktop PC and having 4x 10TB Red NAS drives is cranking up the heat so much it’s at the edge over overheating during summer. I must say my case is actually a sound dampened one with poor airflow…
    That’s also the reason I’m considering replacing the 4 drives with 2 of these HC560 20TB drives.
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  194. Very nice review, thank you!
    You don’t recommend it for regular desktops or even home NAS but what other options are there when you want a 20TB drive?

    I currently own a few 10TB WD Red NAS drives but the HC560 20TB is at its lowest price in 6 months in my area so I am actually thinking about purchasing one.

    EDIT: I am out of physical space in my desktop PC and having 4x 10TB Red NAS drives is cranking up the heat so much it’s at the edge over overheating during summer. I must say my case is actually a sound dampened one with poor airflow…
    That’s also the reason I’m considering replacing the 4 drives with 2 of these HC560 20TB drives.
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  195. Very nice review, thank you!
    You don’t recommend it for regular desktops or even home NAS but what other options are there when you want a 20TB drive?

    I currently own a few 10TB WD Red NAS drives but the HC560 20TB is at its lowest price in 6 months in my area so I am actually thinking about purchasing one.

    EDIT: I am out of physical space in my desktop PC and having 4x 10TB Red NAS drives is cranking up the heat so much it’s at the edge over overheating during summer. I must say my case is actually a sound dampened one with poor airflow…
    That’s also the reason I’m considering replacing the 4 drives with 2 of these HC560 20TB drives.
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  196. First: extremely useful video, thanks! My application is 2 drives in a file server in my living room, so noise is important, especially when idle. What I notice with this WD Red Plus vs. the IronWolf 14TB is a low frequency bass note. My suspicion is that will reverberate around my case and cause vibrations. The Seagate might win for me, I think.
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  197. Do you remember the downfall of KidsTube in 2015?! Well that’s what these HDDs were designed for here before TopazAI remastering for high resolution TV’s and HDR 10 injection.
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  199. Many overlook how the drives are being utilized. For example; 6x Exos x16 12TB drives in 3x mirrored pairs will yield different noise levels than those same 6x drives in Raidz2 or those same 6x drives in 2x striped Raidz1 vdevs.
    It’s refreshing to find a video that takes this in to account. Thanks for sharing, one year ago.
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  203. I bought a 14 tb red plus and there’s a high pitch noise that runs all the time while the drive is on. It’s quiet in terms of clicking and other typical HDD noises but the high pitch noise is driving me insane
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  204. Thanks
    Got one of the for my pc.
    Installing it was easy, just plugged it in as normal and initialised it in windows. (Single drive no raid). This 20tb drive is actually not that loud if you write single big files to it in sequence. But with random read/writes it makes a rackle as described. But since I use it for storing single big HQ 4K and 8k files, it’s fairly quiet, and all I hear is my fans (I do my video editing on m.2 drives).
    I also have it on rubber mountings In my cabinet.
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  205. Thanks
    Got one of the for my pc.
    Installing it was easy, just plugged it in as normal and initialised it in windows. (Single drive no raid). This 20tb drive is actually not that loud if you write single big files to it in sequence. But with random read/writes it makes a rackle as described. But since I use it for storing single big HQ 4K and 8k files, it’s fairly quiet, and all I hear is my fans (I do my video editing on m.2 drives).
    I also have it on rubber mountings In my cabinet.
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  206. Thanks
    Got one of the for my pc.
    Installing it was easy, just plugged it in as normal and initialised it in windows. (Single drive no raid). This 20tb drive is actually not that loud if you write single big files to it in sequence. But with random read/writes it makes a rackle as described. But since I use it for storing single big HQ 4K and 8k files, it’s fairly quiet, and all I hear is my fans (I do my video editing on m.2 drives).
    I also have it on rubber mountings In my cabinet.
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  213. My first hard drive would be so loud it would wake me when people logged on to my BBS. This thing is silent by comparison. I have one of the WD Ultrastars coming for Christmas.
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  214. Good evening Sir, I have just come across your channel. May I ask is £760 on amazon uk for the 36tb WD My Book Duo a good price? I need it for my Bluray movie and TV collections, as well as other things. I was thinking of buying two so as to make sure all my stuff is protected. Thank you and have a loving weekend.
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  219. Thanks for doing these tests and making this video, but. It may have been more useful if you did the tests and then recorded your audio separately afterwards. Also taking that 25db off the meter means that we have to mentally try to add 25 onto a moving meter to work out how loud things actually are. Most people, will be mentally thinking about 30-40-50db, but see 12 and have to add 25 in their head to see how loud it is. We never actually heard the sound of the drive. If you hadn’t done your audio at the same time, you could have boosted the mic on the drive so we can hear what kinds of sounds it was making (whine, hum, clicks etc). The type of sound matters, not just the levels. Some people say the WD make a more high pitched sound compared to Seagate for example. Some say WD sound is more annoying, but also easier to dampen down in a case.
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  220. I have one along 3WD Blue 6tb smr drives in a meshy gaming case. The smr drives didn’t really add any extra perceivable noise but this one… I was seriously concerned that it’s already about to kick the bucket.
    Seems like I’m going to build a nas soon that is out of earshot…
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  223. Does moving of this internal data to flash means that if I put data on disk, disconnect it and leave it for say 3 years not plugged in, there is a chance that I will not be able to read data from disk if something is missing from that 64GB flash storage?
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  228. i came here JUST for the noise section.. i got a WD mybook (which apparently uses reds but not pro) and just plugging in sounded like starting an old windows 1995 drive! — why are they SOO much more noisier? my drive is 16TB but my 8TB is silent! – i was going to get a 4 bay nas with 4 8tb drives (two different raids two drives are used as one and the other two are “clone backups”.. but it was too costly as the 16tb mybook was only £230 on prime deal.

    it also THUMPS every few seconds when not in use, and apparently thats normal? what is going on that makes them thump and be so loud even without reading or writing data?
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  229. I got a WD Mybook 16TB — its SOOO NOISY it sounds like starting up a windows 1995 computer! is that normal? (i heard they use Reds.. just not the pro ones…. in these mybooks and its only 1 day old so dont fancy opening it and not able to get return/replacement!)
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  235. Already have two of those drives in my computer for about 5-6 months, trying to get third one, missed out on lowest pre-order sale at 350gbp per drive, when pound dropped – price gone up to 566gbp then I’ve waited and price dropped down to 407gbp after a week or so thus jumped on third drive and pre-ordered it but, stock is yet to arrive at Scan…
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  236. Already have two of those drives in my computer for about 5-6 months, trying to get third one, missed out on lowest pre-order sale at 350gbp per drive, when pound dropped – price gone up to 566gbp then I’ve waited and price dropped down to 407gbp after a week or so thus jumped on third drive and pre-ordered it but, stock is yet to arrive at Scan…
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  237. Already have two of those drives in my computer for about 5-6 months, trying to get third one, missed out on lowest pre-order sale at 350gbp per drive, when pound dropped – price gone up to 566gbp then I’ve waited and price dropped down to 407gbp after a week or so thus jumped on third drive and pre-ordered it but, stock is yet to arrive at Scan…
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  239. Hi. Your videos are best at comparing hard drives. But i didn’t find any video about toshiba hdds. They’re so cheaper but have same specs as wd & seagate.
    i.e toshiba x300 is cmr, 7200 rpm and 256 mbps.
    Only difference is mttf that in wd and seagate is 2.5 millions hours but in toshiba is 1.2 millions hours. Surprisingly I take a look at backblaze report and toshiba had less failures than seagate!even with less mttf. How is this possible?
    Did you think toshiba drives worth buying? Why toshiba is so cheap?
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  241. The problem I have with big drives is there is almost a guaranteed chance for a bit error on a rebuild so you have to run raid 6 or higher. You also have a bigger chance of a drive failing during the longer rebuilds. Until they get the non recoverable error rate high enough and the drive speeds up to 12G or higher the chance of these failing is higher, plus because you have so much data on them (assuming you are using the full capacity) you are subject to more data loss when the drive fails.
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  244. I bought WD exclusively before I started using NAS two years ago. I read statistics on hard drives and ended up exclusively using Seagate Ironwolf for my NAS. Lately started to wonder whether I should have half Seagate and half WD for my NAS to spread the risks. What do you guys think?
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  247. For a NAS newbie getting ready to purchase his first device (I’m going with the DS920+ based on your recommendations) what HDs would you recommend? I’m a bit of a data hoarder and do have the budget to purchase several (up to 3) 20TB drives but can’t quite decide what brand and size combination my best option would be. Any advice before I pull the trigger?
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  252. I recently bought 6x Exos X18 18TB for around 1600$ (including VAT taxes). Configured them as a Raid-z2 pool for the project I am working on. My general thinking is – get in bulk quantity whatever is on promotion today. Buy the “latest and greatest” only if there is a specific feature you need.
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  258. Thank you for this video! I have an Ironwolf Pro 12 GB (ST12000NE0008) nad the noise isn’t clicky or chattery at all! It’s a much deeper, more grinding noise. The weird thing is that I’ve run a long self test on it through Seatools, which it passed. I’ve also looked at SMART information and everything is seemingly okay.
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  262. Genius, that’s because it is a shite, cheap enclosure and the drive is rattling around in the there causing noise.

    What you are basically saying is, “Don’t buy a craptastic Synology NAS enclosure”.

    Don’t blame the drive for the inadequacies of the enclosure.
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  263. Genius, that’s because it is a shite, cheap enclosure and the drive is rattling around in the there causing noise.

    What you are basically saying is, “Don’t buy a craptastic Synology NAS enclosure”.

    Don’t blame the drive for the inadequacies of the enclosure.
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  264. Genius, that’s because it is a shite, cheap enclosure and the drive is rattling around in the there causing noise.

    What you are basically saying is, “Don’t buy a craptastic Synology NAS enclosure”.

    Don’t blame the drive for the inadequacies of the enclosure.
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  265. What the fuck are you talking about with “Noisy”?

    I have Ultrastar 14 TB and 16 TB drives and you just can’t hear them.

    Of course I buy the Enterprise drives, because they are cheaper than the far inferior “NAS” drives and they have 512 MB of cache which makes a big difference in speed.

    “They make a big old racket when they are working” – that’s utter bullshit.
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  266. What the fuck are you talking about with “Noisy”?

    I have Ultrastar 14 TB and 16 TB drives and you just can’t hear them.

    Of course I buy the Enterprise drives, because they are cheaper than the far inferior “NAS” drives and they have 512 MB of cache which makes a big difference in speed.

    “They make a big old racket when they are working” – that’s utter bullshit.
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  267. What the fuck are you talking about with “Noisy”?

    I have Ultrastar 14 TB and 16 TB drives and you just can’t hear them.

    Of course I buy the Enterprise drives, because they are cheaper than the far inferior “NAS” drives and they have 512 MB of cache which makes a big difference in speed.

    “They make a big old racket when they are working” – that’s utter bullshit.
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  269. when its about hdds, the biggest factor for me is reliability. and thats something you can rarely predict or test in a short term. HDD are the single most breaking point in my computers, since i started with my first pc in 1997. i had Hdds like the WD green 2tb that i bought in 2010, that lastet for 40.000 hours, and wd black, that went dead after just 9.000. and i know, its the mantra and its good practice to backup, but buying stuff redundant, in case one fails, should be the overall end solution here. especially not, if you need like 14tb of space, which then dobules the already high price. what iam looking for, is a 12-14 tb data grave hdd, that gets like 1-10 gb of data written on it week and that will last for at least 6 years with 12 hours on time per day. ye, i know, you can never be sure.. and thats the part i hate
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  275. I have an external OWC hard disk enclosure. In it I have 2 18 TB Ultrastar’s. Yes, they area little noise but I actually enjoy it.
    When the RED drives on my WD EX4100 NAS die I will buy Ultrastar’s oy maybe WD Gold’s. The RED’s are pointless in my opinion.
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  276. I have an external OWC hard disk enclosure. In it I have 2 18 TB Ultrastar’s. Yes, they area little noise but I actually enjoy it.
    When the RED drives on my WD EX4100 NAS die I will buy Ultrastar’s oy maybe WD Gold’s. The RED’s are pointless in my opinion.
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  278. I just got a EXOS into my personal computer (mistake) and I hear a very noticable clicking noise coming from inside the enclosure. Don’t notice this in your review, but others have pointed out the same clicking noise. Although may be fine in a data center, definitely annoying in a PC, so will be returning.
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  279. I got the Toshiba Mg08 at 16gb as I feel that is the best price point. Furthermore it still has more traditional CMR tech in it. I leave the FC-MAMR newer experiments to others for now. Yes it is noisy as well.
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  282. 20TB or not, it’s WD. I mean after years using WD MyCloud and its discs, I’m now a Synology and Seagate convert. Especially after my MyCloud bricked for not being able to upgrade to OS5.

    So no. No more WD for me. Just as anything LG products.

    Now, I have the 20TB Seagate Ironwolf HDD for my Plex libraries.
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  287. I was literally trying to decide exactly this for my 1st NAS on a 6 bay Synology. I already have like 25TB storage in my desktop maxed out. I can get this for 1.1k but the 18TB is $850. Thats alot of difference but my OCD and round numbers!!!

    Subbed and added so many of your videos to a watchlist
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  290. Largest drive I have so far is the WD Gold 18tb and I don’t notice too much noise…or I could just be used to a lot of machinery running that it doesn’t phase me. Have you done any comparisons on the Red Pro vs. Gold vs Ultrastar? I’ll look on the channel to see if I can find some. I’m trying to see if there’s really any difference other than price.
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  292. How loud is it (decibels)? Without using a standardized SPL measurement, it’s impossible to tell. Even your video audio gain levels vary substantially from video to video. So getting an actual measurement…. The variances are too great to arrive at a reasonably comprehensive audio level between the “deltas”.
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  293. How loud is it (decibels)? Without using a standardized SPL measurement, it’s impossible to tell. Even your video audio gain levels vary substantially from video to video. So getting an actual measurement…. The variances are too great to arrive at a reasonably comprehensive audio level between the “deltas”.
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  296. I have the 18TB wd red pro version. 9 platters at 2tb. Doesn’t have the optinand but it’s faster than the 20TB for some reason. I’m also a bit worried about data corruption on optinand. The whole metadata table is on there. You could lose all data on the disk in an instant.
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  297. Now that somebody has pointed it out, I can”t help notice the lip sync delay. Its like watching a 1970’s martial arts movie. ????
    And back on topic that single 20Tb drive is the same size as all the drives in my DS918. Gulp ????????
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  300. I understand that helium can pass through steel over time due to its molecular size. Are there any known issues with these Helium filled drives? Do they leak over time? Thanks.
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  303. I just got the 1821+ now the mission is to fill it with these and 2 drives of redundancy. I have started with shr1 and 4 wd red 2tb drives though as they where living around.
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  308. Nice but I’m not in the target audience. I need a maximum of 4TB storage space and have therefore set up a small 4 bay NAS with SSD’s at home. That was the best decision for me. No noise, no vibrations and always quick access to my data.
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  309. Too many eggs in the same bag? Think on those with a 2-bay NAS. They don’t have a Plan B. U R right when you speak about the backup, but maybe they only need a backup of certain files, not all of them. Regards.
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  311. The 20tb wd ultra star hc560 for 375 on scan. Sometime cheaper to get 16tb toshiba enterprise 238 to 260. And 18tb toshiba 280 to 300 vs 600 to 650 gor the 22tb models that just came out to buy last few days. So sometimes cheaper buying twice as many smaller drives so 36tb vs 22tb and some change
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  315. Is it true that some HDDS have weird idle sounds, while PC not doing anything?
    Please also add some tests where you having Game on HDD, and then you run the game and measure sounds HDD doing.
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  319. I think one of the biggest things you left out was the amount of seagulls you can store on a 20 tb drive. LOL You should do a 5 star rating but instead of stars a 5 seagull rating 🙂 great work thanks for sharing and you do amazing work.
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  320. I think one of the biggest things you left out was the amount of seagulls you can store on a 20 tb drive. LOL You should do a 5 star rating but instead of stars a 5 seagull rating 🙂 great work thanks for sharing and you do amazing work.
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  321. Are they really that noisy? I’ve seen some noise charts of the 16TB ultra and isn’t that much more on paper, yes being quite & less power draw is good but I can’t validate spending 20% more money for a product that is less durable like surely one should be able to try and build a sound damping enclosure or something
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  322. Are they really that noisy? I’ve seen some noise charts of the 16TB ultra and isn’t that much more on paper, yes being quite & less power draw is good but I can’t validate spending 20% more money for a product that is less durable like surely one should be able to try and build a sound damping enclosure or something
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  323. I only run enterprise drives in my main NAS. Toshiba is a brand hardly mentioned on here but they tend to be the cheapest drive in the UK (aside from the ones rebranded by Synology) and when it comes to noise they are as least as quiet as any other large capacity drive. Great drives, great performance, reliable and at a very good price.
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  324. I only run enterprise drives in my main NAS. Toshiba is a brand hardly mentioned on here but they tend to be the cheapest drive in the UK (aside from the ones rebranded by Synology) and when it comes to noise they are as least as quiet as any other large capacity drive. Great drives, great performance, reliable and at a very good price.
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  333. I am consistently annoyed at drive capacity ratings being much higher than that of a typically formatted drive. As drive architectures hold greater and greater capacities that much more total space is consumed for non-usable purposes. Drive manufacturers know that people do not run uninitialized and unformatted drives in our systems yet they continue to quote a drive capacity of 20TB when in actuality it is about 10% less at 18.2TB when initialized and formatted. It’s like the gas stations that still charge that 9/10 of a cent per gallon of gas on top of the dollar and cents price here in the US. Who are these people kidding?
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  334. I am consistently annoyed at drive capacity ratings being much higher than that of a typically formatted drive. As drive architectures hold greater and greater capacities that much more total space is consumed for non-usable purposes. Drive manufacturers know that people do not run uninitialized and unformatted drives in our systems yet they continue to quote a drive capacity of 20TB when in actuality it is about 10% less at 18.2TB when initialized and formatted. It’s like the gas stations that still charge that 9/10 of a cent per gallon of gas on top of the dollar and cents price here in the US. Who are these people kidding?
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  339. I don’t agree with your assessment Rob, these are awesome in regular DS’, been running them for years. TBH if you are looking at NAS pro drives, go for enterprise. Ofc unless you have a fairly remote location like a basement/attic/garage not sensitive to noise to place it, don’t choose these. But this is also true for pro drives, I believe your earlier noise test proved as much.
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  340. I don’t agree with your assessment Rob, these are awesome in regular DS’, been running them for years. TBH if you are looking at NAS pro drives, go for enterprise. Ofc unless you have a fairly remote location like a basement/attic/garage not sensitive to noise to place it, don’t choose these. But this is also true for pro drives, I believe your earlier noise test proved as much.
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  341. On QNAP, as the legend says purple means free (a disk not yet used for either data, spare or cache). Nothing to do with compatibility lists 😉
    But that’s nitpicking, nice video although I’ll avoid these drives due to their noise. And guess who helped me decide that.
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  342. On QNAP, as the legend says purple means free (a disk not yet used for either data, spare or cache). Nothing to do with compatibility lists 😉
    But that’s nitpicking, nice video although I’ll avoid these drives due to their noise. And guess who helped me decide that.
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  345. Before anyone frags you for your spelling of Neighbours ( not Neighbors ), that is how the word – proper noun or not, is spelled in the world outside of the U.S. Yes, I know, far too many people don’t know the difference between you’re and your so I’m not expecting too many to even notice. But, just in case…
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  346. Before anyone frags you for your spelling of Neighbours ( not Neighbors ), that is how the word – proper noun or not, is spelled in the world outside of the U.S. Yes, I know, far too many people don’t know the difference between you’re and your so I’m not expecting too many to even notice. But, just in case…
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  347. Nice breakdown of the differences in the drives. The drive noise (along with heat) are exactly why my 12 and 8 bay NAS’ are in the basement. I only keep the 6-bay full of SSD’s in my office.
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  348. Nice breakdown of the differences in the drives. The drive noise (along with heat) are exactly why my 12 and 8 bay NAS’ are in the basement. I only keep the 6-bay full of SSD’s in my office.
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  351. Got a 16TB white label drive shucked from a WD Elements. Turned out to be a relabled Ultrastar and boy is it noisy!
    Idle is OK but seek noises are ridiculous even more than old IBM drives which even at idle make a racket!
    P.s. Audio is out of sync from the beginning.
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  352. Got a 16TB white label drive shucked from a WD Elements. Turned out to be a relabled Ultrastar and boy is it noisy!
    Idle is OK but seek noises are ridiculous even more than old IBM drives which even at idle make a racket!
    P.s. Audio is out of sync from the beginning.
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  355. call me old or nostalgic, but i love the noise of a good hard drive.
    I do love the speed in gaming of an ssd, but big hard drives are still magical to me, thats why i still have an optical drive in my new desktop…it is a blueray drive though.
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  359. I would appreciate a table with noise measurements, and comparison to other drives. Without the comparison it doesn’t make sense.
    I do have 10 Exos X14s and they are REALLY noisy, while on your test they don’t produce any noise.
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  362. I tried the same but with the 18tb exos drive… When I put it in my powered HDD enclosure I hear a beeping sound in a stable timing. Is it the power that is too low? If yes, what external enclosure do you use?
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  364. Your test is not correct. You calibrated your “sound meter” down to 6-10 dB which is impossible in a normal environment. You will be hard pressed to find an environment thats under 20 dB. You talking shows ~30-40 dB which is not correct, its more like 45-60 dB. Its not exactly wrong, one can add ~+20 dB to your results and get a real picture of how much SPL is there since the ratio is still correct. In any case, do not equate “silence” to your ears to 0 dB, it is not. We cant really hear under 10 dB so if you have “dead silence” in a room you are probably in the range of 10-20 dB SPL depending on the frequency.

    Im an environmental protection engineer and i specialize in noise measurements.
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  366. I am not really sure how calibration of any amount is going to make any difference. The drive noise will still be relative to the background level, which in your room very likely was 20dB on that meter. The calibration would have just calibrated ALL the readings down by the same amount…… Also, noise inside an enclosure, including any resonance, is important.
    With that said, I have found the WD Red Plus drives to be fairly quiet when compared to the Pro drives when used in real world installs in Synology NAS devices. The spin-up generally is quite reasonable, but the noise from the steppers driving the heads is quite loud on Pro level drives I have used when compared to the Plus.
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  371. A picture may be worth a 1000 words – but in this case 100 words on a web page would have been much faster to read! Please put a results summary in the description, because I couldn’t find any useful info in the video. Also – showing the sound level meter whilst you’re talking is really confusing.
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  372. Thanks for this video, i was worried about my 16tb wd red, it’s in a fractal brand computer case and the drive ebay is a bit loose so it makes a lot of rattling noise each time it wakes up from sleep mode, the drive is steady secure screwed in the sliding tray but the tray vibrates in the drive bay slot and makes a lot of metal noise.
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  373. Thanks for posting up this video. I was curious about the EXOS because their price is really fantastic but am unsure because of the spin up/down as well as noise. My supermicro platform IS in my basement storage area but I would worry that if we moved and that was not an option that the server would become fairly unusable because of said noise.

    As of this posting(3/23/22) exos 14tb on Amazon are $237 whereas 12tb wd red plus are $239. I may sacrifice the 2tb for the lower noise and 2yr less warranty considering.
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  377. Hi, thank you so much for the comparisons and noise test videos of these disks. They helps a lot! By the way, i’m considering to get either Barracuda Pro 10TB or Ironwolf Pro 10TB for my desktop computer. I want it to be reliable and trusty for a years of use. Looks like they all loud and noisy hdds. I’m not a NAS builder guy here, just looking to get a reliable hdd 🙂 I can consider WD UltraStar too, prices are very close between these but i think ultrastars are noisier… I looked for WD Blacks which probably would be the best choice but amazon doesn’t have stock in my country, so they are out of choice right now. What HDD you would recommend for me?
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  379. I just replaced two 4TB Seagate IronWolf drives with 2 16TB Exos drives in a DS220+ and wow these are WAY louder. I could barely hear the IronWolf’s, but when these are working there’s much more audible “clicking” and “thunking” noises going on. I’m guessing it’s due to the drastic size and platter differences on the drives.
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  383. Enterprise drives like Exos are significantly cheaper than the home/NAS drives, where I am, in Norway. For instance, the price of the Exos X18 16TB, is slightly lower (US$409) than the cheapest large “NAS” drive I can find, WD Red Plus NAS 14 TB (which is on sale for 24% off). I’m very sensitive to noise (and limited placement options), so I’m afraid I have to go with the Red Plus anyway. The Exos supports something called PowerBalance, which I think is likely to reduce the seek noise at the cost of performance. There’s a command to enable/disable it in SeaChest tools. Doesn’t say what the default is, I suspect it’s probably “ON”. @NASCompares, any idea about that?
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  385. Well, it will be interesting how the exos 16TB will do in my synology until summer when i’m gonna get a 18TB or 2 for a nas i will build myself with unraid 🙂

    Also, which program did you use to share the screen of your phone?
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  389. Thanks for the video, I was thinking that my drive is broken because of all that noises but it’s seems is just normal. I like how you are so knowledgeable about hard drives, there are a lot of information on your videos in general.
    You deserve more subscribers, keep up the good work.
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  391. This is a great video, HDD noise is very often overlooked by reviews, and it’s a shame, because noise is very important for desktop computers, especially for quiet/silent builds.
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  392. bought a WD Red pro 16tb for my Zapitti…..not too bad when i play my SD tv shows….. prob is when i play my larger 4k movie files….. knocking noise can be heard across the room>>.,,,, getting most annoying???….
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  393. In regard to the Western digital ultrastar DC HC550 16 TB, idle and operating noise level is actually higher than what is state in the specification. And most irksome of all is the high pitched whiny noise it makes. Personally the 16 terabytes UltraStar is just too noisy to be used in a personal computer especially when sitting within several feet from the hard drive.
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  394. Western digital specification states noise level at idle is 20 decimal, and is 36 decibel while operating. However, the 16 TB UltraStar DC HC550 also makes klunking movement noise about 45 to 50 decibels once every 5 seconds 3/4 of the time, and once every 10 seconds 1/4 of the time. This noise is way too loud when sitting within two feet of the hard drive. Personally I think it is just too loud being within 5 ft of the hard drive. Is this repeating noise once every five or 10 seconds present in all of Western Digital internal hard drive. Which hard drive series has this noise and which doesn’t?
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  398. That noise at 5:19. I get that a lot in my Synology NAS (DS920+). I have it sitting next to my Nvidia Shield which is on a small shelf under my TV. When watching movies this noise is quite noticeable and is quite irritating. Is there anything that can be done to avoid it given that it doesn’t appear to be a Read/Write issue according to your test. My previously built custom server (which I’ve started dismantling since purchasing the NAS) never had this issue although it was using different HDDs, 8TB HGST Enterprise filled with helium apparently. Unsure if that makes a difference. Current NAS drives are 12TB Seagate Ironwolfs.
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  399. what are these regular dull bang sounds? i never heard this from a disk.
    i know “clicky/screechy” seek sounds and “clacky” write sounds.
    but this “boom …… booom ….”
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  400. my 3yr 3mo old 12TB IronWolf (non pro) just started throwing bad sectors. a couple thousand worth of bad sectors. bleh – running the extended smart test now. for a good laugh, I was hoping for some seagull noise. cheers mate!
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  404. Brought two ironwolf 8tb’s today, my existing drives are all 5400rpm.

    Oh boy these are super noisy, its not vibrations/seeks, those are barely audible, as they are drowned out by the whirring of the high 7200rpm.

    Its sad there is no 5400rpk 8tb NAS drives :/

    I am not sure how you found these only a little more noisy than 5400rpm drives.

    They sitting in a drive rack which is sitting on top of my spare pc case, if I plonk a cardboard box over them the noise becomes semi acceptable, so basically going through cardboard its still noisier than a exposed 5400 rpm drive.
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  411. I bought a 6TB Ironwolf Pro and returned it assuming it was broken… It was very loud in general both read/write, had some similar noises like in the video but also some small “scratch” type of noises, reminded me of old drives back in the 2000s lol. My PC is also on my desk and the HDD made the whole desk slightly vibrate… after ~30mins of usage my hands felt like I had just mown the lawn haha. Wish I was joking, but yeah lesson learned about NAS drives. I have a 2TB Hitachi from 2011 that is starting to make a little noise but it’s still nothing compared to how bad this NAS was. I’ll try a WD Black next, hopefully it will be more quiet.
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  412. I just tried out 4 drives, Seagate Barracuda, Seagate Exos 7E2, Exos 782, and WD Gold (all 2TB for home PC drive replacement). The fastest and most quiet was the newer Seagate Exos 7E8 (up to 250MBs), the regular Barracuda was also quiet but tested speed was 212MBs. The WD Gold and Exos 7E2 were the loudest.
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  413. I recently setup 8x 4tb hgst sas drives in raid 6. I wanted to check of the sound they made was normal or drive failure since they are used drives. And im new to sas drives. They get pretty loud spinning up together
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  414. Hi. I was wondering… Has reliability evolved on air-filled ultrastar hdds since hitachi was acquired by wd? For example, is a dc hc 300 series just a more dense evolution of the 7k3000 or have they changed on other ways and become more reliable than the old drives were? Thanks.
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