I have tried the Seagate Barracuda 3TB and imo its just way too noisy for me. So I have decided to pay a bit extra for the WD hdds. So which one shall I get? They are both similar priced yet the Red comes with 3 year warranty. I just want to know which one will be most quiet?

Thank you.

Both my 2TB Greens and 3TB Reds are quiet. Anyway, in your case i would buy WD Red for few simple reasons - no 8s sleep thingy causing hundreds of thousands load/unload cycles in few months and lower power consumption.

Ok thank you bearing in mind this is purely for HTPC use and not NAS. Would it still be a viable option?

My eight 3TB Reds are quieter than the four 4TB Greens that they've replaced, especially under load. I cannot hear them seeking in the case that's right next to my chair.

If you're willing to pay the premium, Red's all the way.

Take that with a pinch of salt, the cycle scare reached FUD levels of paranoia. In my case as a desktop storage drive I use every day, the count is 88,817 - in 735,9 days of Power On Time, which comes to a little over 2 years non-stop. Hardly drive-breaking.

The new WD Reds are review-proven to be quieter, though, so from a silence perspective you should definitely get one of those. You get an extra year of warranty to boot.

Well, i started with 6 WD20EARS. I am down to 2. They got replaced over time by WD20EARX from RMA. I also replaced one WD20EARX due RMA.

My Greens and reds (cycles/hours) :
WD20EARX (Green) - 71834/12074, 6572/4298, 34867/7215, 56511/12034, 67043/12136, 52303/8591
WD20EARS (Green) - 73492/14028, 156826/19464
WD30EFRX (Red) - 12/3032, 12/3032, 1/603, 1/603 (yes, 12 and 1 load cycles for each pair of 3TB Reds)

And these drives weren't even accessed frequently, usually only for 2-3 hours per day (and of course not all of them), so those load/unload cycles are rather high. If i would have these drives in RAID or as a primary data drive, then i would have much, much higher load counts on those Greens.

I find my 2TB WD Red to be very noisy.
As soon as I unplug it and leave it off running with just ssd it's dead quite pc.

I recently bought a 2TB Red to put in one of my old Antec MX-1 enclosures and have found immeasurably quieter seekwise than either of the two versions of Greens I've bought in the last 18 months. Pot luck?

I think it depends on what we consider quite.
I sleep 4m away from my 'server' and during the nights it's very audible, even though most of time it's idling and hdd is not seeking.
But as soon as I leave my serverr unning on SSD only, you can hardly tell there is a pc in the room.

Does the server case have vibration damping mounts for the SSD or is it just hard mounted? It might be more of a case problem than an HDD problem...

I recently bought 2 WD30EFRX for my NAS and they're both louder than a WD20EARS I also have.

Why not just disable the load cycling? There are several tools for different operating systems which can set load cycling interval, or disable it entirely. My three years old WD10EARS have done 74 and 77 cycles, respectively. My latest drive, less than a year old, has done eight.

Edit: These drives are on 24/7 and see both lots of active use and lots of idle time.

WD Red are no more quiet as before. I have 3TB 6 months old and it is quiet. Now I bought 4 TB and is very loud on seeking, also it make some head movement every 10 seconds (it is not load/unload cycle). I returned it and bought 3 TB, because I thought it was because of 4 platters.
But the new 3 TB is also loud when seeking.

Pity.

Would you be able to list model and serial or production numbers plus year of manufacture for reference so we can see what batch it is?

All new Reds in sale are now the louder ones. I'm not sure if the difference begins with NasWare 2.0 vs NasWare. I think they did it to increase performance (they must internally disable Automatic Acoustic Management). By HDTune, average seek is better now - 16 vs 21 ms, but hell they are so loud now, if you have Nas at home, especially fanless Nas like the Qnap's one, you will hear the difference.

As I found, all of them performing Background Media Scan on idle every 10 seconds, that is fine, but only on old Reds you can't hear it (as you can't hear seeking).

I tested 4TB made on february 2014 (I have no model number because I returned it), 3TB made also on 02/2014 has model WD30EFRX-68EUZN0. As I checked web about 4TB, they should be loud from beginning (25/28 dBA).

I found WD made at least one thing "quiet" - they changed pdf datasheets on their web site, without a notice. Here is current datasheet compared to 2013 one, what I downloaded via archive.org:

Idle/Seek (dBA)
2013
2014

WD30EFRX
23/24
23/27

WD20EFRX
23/24
23/27

WD10EFRX
21/22
21/24

I think your review should be updated, because now everywhere are reviewed older Reds, and people buying them when they need quiet Nas.

If all they have done is to disable AAM by default, then it's not that bad.

It is, for people who have Nas at homes, I returned 2 x Red because of that. But it is not "by default disabled", you can not enable it at all. And that is what I can't understand, if they at least enable AAM configuration for users.

And the drive is not so much laud by self (when you hold it in air), but it's louder in Nas compared to older Reds. I think it's because metal case increasing sound levels or vibrations from heads movements.

Alright, my quiet drive is WD30EFRX-68AX9N0, so the three mid letters got changed. Something to be aware of for future buyers then. Any more reports, anyone?

If WD really did cock up the silence aspect then it's time to shoot for Seagate NAS HDDs instead, isn't it.

Exactly. Stupid move from WD if there's no way to activate AAM.

Is there more information on this? When Seagate suddenly dropped AAM support back in the day, there was a bit of an outcry from the community.

Is the Seagate Nas at least at same noise level as the quiet ones WD Reds? And I don't meaon only in tests, but in reality when they are mounted in some small Nas..?

I think they did this because Seagate was better in benchmarks, but I do not care if there is difference 126 vs 121 MB/s, I care if I can sleep in same room as my Nas is. But of course customers are customres, they will always buy by specifications, pity...

I haven't heard a NAS HDD (what a stupid name...) recently, but when I did they were certainly quiet. You could hear more than you can from my old Red, but it wasn't bad for sure.

Originally I abandoned Seagate precisely because they didn't care about silence enough (like Vicotnik pointed out they made some bad moves). Competing with performance is the dumbest thing when HDDs are capped so low compared to SSDs, and the competition is so even inside a given category anyway. You need a clear advantage like a longer warranty, better acoustics or so to come out ahead.

alright im going to jump in with my report as well.

i'm a long-time laptop user and i have 6 or 7 wd mybook essential drive. i think the inside of it i assume would be wd green. it's 2 AM here at the moment, i can hear fanlike noise from it. sometimes when i copy paste or saving something to it, i can hear the click click seeking sound as well.

i just build my very first PC 2 weeks ago, i bought WD Red because reviews of its quietness. well its far quieter alright when its idle compare to my external 3.5" mybook (green).

but when it's seeking / saving / playing games from it, the clicking sound is loud.

at first i thought the drive is dying, checked with crystalmark info it's still say good. it's loud when i access it, even when i just move renaming or making new folders and arranging my files it goes click click click click click.
but when it's idle it's quiet.

also i found a post here saying the new wd red head parking set to 8 seconds or smthn.

is that why when seeking it's noisy or did i just get bad drive?
it doesn't emit any noise when i just access my SSD though, unlike my wd mybook (green) that emits that fan noise sound even when its not being access

Thanks for the observations, and especially the link. Good info on there. I would dearly like to believe that the head parking for one thing is an oversight and not intended behaviour (aggressive parking is arguably undue mechanical stress on the drive). I doubt WD quality control would let the wrong firmware slip in, but whoever is coding the Reds might have mixed up the drive behaviour with Greens... not likely, but possible in my mind.

As for the noise: it is a price WD seem to have decided to pay to bump up their performance numbers. As reported earlier (by vicotnik I think), the drive spec sheet on WD's site reports a faster seek time than earlier versions, so the noisy seeking is definitely intended behaviour, a feature. Your drive is more than likely not faulty, simply behaving according to new, noisier WD code.

I just bought a NAS and went with a Seagate NAS HDD. I was informed on Seagate's site that they do come with a 3-year limited manufacturer's warranty, so the decision was a no-brainer with these reports surfacing of loud Reds.

I also bought a NAS for my father and got new Reds for that one. He hasn't complained about loud seeks, but he is getting on in years and was born before modern HDDs even existed, so...

when i didnt understand about computer at all, like 10 years ago, i had a couple external drives and laptop drives died on me. so... im familar with the clicking sound of dead somewhat.

haven't had drives died on me in 6 years running now. i'd say that as a context that the wd red loudness is alarmingly loud man. it was so loud that initially i was stressed out having to go RMA it, because warranty here is handled by the local distributors and the level of service generally speaking is really bad.

i dont want to shell out another $120 to buy another 2tb red just to test if i get faulty drive or not, so i was stressed out for the past 3 hours.

i tell you this story partially because i probably have OCD lol, but the other part is that because it's darn loud when accessed.

admitttedly im putting the PC next to me on the table with my case open 2/3 days ago. but now as im typing this,, i put it 3 feet away from me and i can still hear it. my case stock fans is quite loud at 100%, i can't believe the Red can drown out the stock fans noise.

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OTOH, im running the WD data lifeguard diagnostic extended test ATM... is that a read-only operation or smthn? because now the WD red is dead quiet. (typing this post on my laptop).

Well, as you've concluded yourself, the thing to do would be to listen and compare. Maybe find someone who also has the new WD Reds. I have no personal experience with the new batch, so I can't really say if it should be "alarmingly loud" or not, but the word out there seems to be that the noise is quite definitely audible.

Sleeping on it might smooth over your perception a little, see if it still sounds like it's dying in the morning, or if it's just loud like the drives of yore.

i apologize if any of my previous posts sounded a little bit rude. i felt my posts sounded like that after rereading it myself haha.

oh well my next storage will be seagate nas then probably. or sv35. whichever is quieter.

how to suspect in a simple way if this drive is faulty or not?
is it because it's very quiet when idle and only clackety when accessed then it's probably normal??

also what tests does ppl usually use to check hdd health?
is ultimately the wd data lifeguard extended diagnostic test already a good way to test it?

btw... if i return this to WD, will i definitely get recertified drive instead of a retail drive?

SMART data and drive performance are pretty much the only indicators for your average consumer. If both are okay (no SMART warnings, no endless retrying, consistent waking, no sudden freezes etc.), then the drive is more than likely okay. Diagnostics can be used to detect performance degradation and bad sectors (creeping faults), but usually a dead drive either surprises you or is pretty obvious in the first place because it doesn't behave in the usual fashion.

Drives are ONLY noisy when accessed because that's when the heads (the noisy parts - the spinning disks are very quiet now and there are fewer of them) do their work; HOW NOISY depends on how aggressive the firmware is. Here's an old WD demo that demonstrates in simplified terms what is going on: http://www.wdc.com/en/flash/index.asp?family=intelliseek#.

As you can see, faster head movement translates to improved performance, but it's obviously going to be more forceful, jerkier, and thus noisier. Same with spinning a disk at 10,000 or 7,200 or 5,xxx RPM - the faster (more force, energy) the noisier, especially if you do nothing to mitigate it.

Haven't had to RMA a single WD drive so don't know what you'll get. A refurbished item would make the most sense because they will have been checked by WD and WD wants to get rid of them rather than lose profit on brand-new items.

PS. I do recall being paranoid about some drive noises myself, but the noisy drives I either got rid of or have lived with for several years. The Buffalo NAS makes horrible stuttering noises I haven't heard since the 486/586 era, but it has worked consistently and efficiently regardless.

thank you very much for the link. If i were to describe the noise level it would be the picture with no intelliseek on it. that'd perfectly describe the noise.

what makes me kind of sad is that it's a little louder than wd black drive sound that i've youtube'd for.

that, and there's no return policy where i live, so there's that.

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regarding the drive being okay..
no SMART warnings = yes
smart test = passed
extended test = passed
no sudden freezes => probably not
no endless retrying => ?
no consistent waking => ?

what is endless retrying and consistent waking?

1 thing i notice is abt the drive is that, if i do some work on the SSD drive for like 30 mins / an hour.. then if i try to access the red drive, it doesn't open instantly... it's like the drive have to wake up first.

is that normal?

"Endless retries" = can't access data, drive repeating a clear pattern of noises as the heads try and try again.

"Consistent waking" = the drive "wakes up" from low power states into operation the same way every time. Worn out or damaged drives may fail to start "cold" (from long power-off), or start erratically.

The drive taking a moment to "wake up" is normal. It has entered a low power state like above, and needs to spin the disks up again - a mechanical delay. With old drives you could clearly hear the motor and disks wind up, but modern drives are so quiet you'll rarely notice the start. You can usually adjust this behaviour from your OS by setting the idle time a drive is allowed before it goes to "sleep" (spins down). It is arguably better for the drive in the long run if it can stay spinning rather than stopping and starting all the time - consider your scenario when defining the settings.

What you're describing just sounds like a regular loud drive and a slightly paranoid user.

PS. I just bought a 3 TB Seagate NAS HDD. The drive is quite nice, has some seek noise but very muted and soft compared to my old AAKS for example. Would maybe pick a Green over this for a workstation if I just HAD TO have an HDD, but it's well-suited for the NAS box. Definitely not silent like my old 3 TB Red (from January 2013).

im paranoid about the RMA rather than about the drive themselves...
asking for warranty for computer goods that isn't mouse / keyboards / audio is a nightmare, i really don't want to deal with it, and i don't want to buy a new drive and ditch this instead

have to save money when H440 arrive.

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if it's a regular loud drive then that's good i guess. i'll live. but goodbye red for the time being for me until i can hear proper comparisons...

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OH! i just checked my wd red, its the same models with the ones the previous posters reported, WD30EFRX-68EUZN0, mine is 20EFRX ofc.

so.. somehow the 68euzno is loud