SPCR

Dear all,

I have bought Toshiba MG05ACA800E drives. Well, these drives are cheap, solid, fast and have long warranty - but they are incredible loud while seeking. I have my HP Microserver G8 in a wardrobe near our bed (in a studio/1 room flat) and it is just not OK.

I am looking for another drives. I used to have WD RED 3TB (WD30EFRX) - these were absolutely OK, quiet seek, but I need larger. How about new WD REDs or Seagate IronWolf, both 8 or 10 TB capacity? Anyone has an experience with these drives?

Thank you & best regards,
Jan

Sadly, I do not believe what you are looking for exists. My understanding is that none of the >4 TB hard drives on the market qualify as "quiet".

I tried Seagate Seawolf 10 TB (ST10000VN0004) and WD Red 10 TB (WD100EFAX). I recorded them along with a WD RED 3 TB (WD30EFRX) for reference, see results here. The Seagate is the worst and makes all kinds of crazy sounds. The WD is a bit more well-behaved but is still much louder than the 3 TB version. (This is somewhat consistent with the dB numbers shown on these drives datasheets, by the way. Apparently Seagate recently released a 14 TB IronWolf that's significantly quieter than the others, but it's hard to find and of course very expensive.)

To be fair, it's not just that these 10 TB drives are loud - it's also that the WD RED 3 TB is an incredibly quiet drive. It's so quiet that I can't even record its noise properly - it's too close to the room noise floor, even when seeking. When you're used to such amazing acoustic performance, it's hard not to be disappointed when using any other drive.