Hello. So I have a 12TB Elements bought 6 months ago and a 8TB Easystore bought beginning of this year and both sound exactly the same when operating- extremely quiet, in fact almost fully silent, with the usual thumping/click sound every few seconds. However, I just bought two more 8TB Elements a few days ago and these sound COMPLETELY different than those two old ones. In these new drives there is a very noticeable loud whirring sound as though there is a fan running inside. I mean just totally different operating sound than the other two, which don’t have that fan sound whatsoever and are very silent. So did something change in these drives recently? Were fans recently added to the Elements by any chance? Did someone else notice what I’m talking about? Thank you.
No, there are no fans inside a 8TB Elements enclosure … and physically, there is no room for one.
Here’s a shucking video i found on Youtube … skip to end to see the complete disassembly.
@JoeySmyth Thanks for the reply Joey.
It turns out that the difference in noise is because the new ones are air-filled drives while the old ones I had are helium-filled, so they are operating very differently. Indeed completely different units with different hardware, under the same exact model numbers.
Looks like WD is playing fun little games with the consumers.
