Noisy Hard Drive

Internal Drives WD Red
1

Hi all,

In February I purchased two RED WD181KFGX disks for my NAS.
I’m realizing that they are very noisy, even when there is no apparent data traffic I can hear them scratching.
Do you think this is normal?
Having a NAS so noisy next to the PC monitor is annoying…

Thanks
Semola

2

disks are mechanical so expect some noise, I use felt feet on my disk boxes and they help a lot

3

I did some tests and I realized that they are very noisy during the data migration phase from the old NAS, I think because the data transfer is relatively slow (I’m transferring at an average of 10Mb/s). Copying a 5gb file from an SSD to the new NAS I did not detect excessive noise.

4

Excessive noise from WD Red Pro drives (WD181KFGX) when idle isn’t typical behavior. While these enterprise-grade drives do make some operational noise, persistent “scratching” sounds during idle periods could indicate a few issues:

  1. The drives might be performing background operations like RAID rebuilding or data scrubbing
  2. The firmware could be aggressively handling power management with frequent head parking
  3. There might be a mechanical issue with one or both drives

A few things you could try:

  • Check your NAS software for any background tasks that might be running
  • Update the drive firmware if updates are available
  • Consider isolating which drive is making the noise by temporarily removing one
  • Try mounting the drives with anti-vibration grommets if your NAS case supports them

If the noise continues and seems abnormal, you might want to contact Western Digital support, as these drives typically come with a 5-year warranty.

5

Felt self-adhesive feet are widely available and so wonders for disk racket