Looking to upgrade my NAS hard drives. Currently have two 4TB WD Red Plus hard drives but I wanted to get some large capacity drives. Was looking into getting 16 or 18TB drives. My current drives are basically whisper quiet and have been running great since 2019 but I feel like it’s time to upgrade the capacity.
The NAS is currently on a desk beside my computer. I don’t have any cabinets to place it in and would prefer not to connect to it through Wi-Fi. Hence why I’d like for the drives to be as quiet as possible.
I was considering getting a Seagate Exos or Ironwolf (and buying used for the great price) but I’ve read users online saying they regret buying those models because of their noise. I was also looking at the WD Red Pro but WD’s own website only rates them at 3.6/5 with most of the negative complaints about dead on arrival drives. Additionally 25% of all reviews are 1 star; both of which don’t fill me with much confidence.
TLDR: What’s a quiet and reliable hard drive recommendation for a NAS?
Would it be better just to go with the WD Red Plus at a lower capacity?
Those used enterprise drives are actually highly reliable but they do make a ton of very unpleasant sounding noise and it’s not just loud “brown noise” whirring like a normal HDD.
Here is a video of what they sounds like, not something most people would want on their desk.
I think that’s being amplified by the case. They do make more noise than most, but it’s not actually all that loud. I have four in the server in my bedroom, and the fan, even at quiet low speed, is louder than the drives.
It’s probably a matter of taste, but every one I’ve ever heard was absolutely not something I would want next to me on my desk while I was trying to focus.
I have 6 used Ultrastar drives in my case on my desk and never hear them but it might be more that my Fractal Design case keeps them quiet. Previously I had 9 WD white labels that I shucked and didnt hear them either though I did have a couple issues with the drives resonating in the case. That was fixed by tweaking some of the drive caddys slightly.
Oh wow that sounds awful. I wasn’t expecting it to be that bad. Thanks for the tip! I hadn’t considered checking YouTube for sound tests.
Yeah haha, as the other guy said, this drive definitely seems on the louder side of average, but the thing I wanted to illustrate is the pattern of the sound which I think is distracting at any volume.