Please tell me what is the quietest larger capacity hard drive to buy. I just bought two 12TB Gold drives and they are nowhere near as quiet as my 4TB Red drives for example. Yes I know more platters and slower speeds, but what larger capacity drives can I buy that are the equivalent of my 4TB Reds in regards to sound when idle? I don’t wan to hear clicking and noise coming out of them ideally every 5 seconds or so which is supposedly normal. Western Digital please tell and ideally you have a spec sheet with all the noise levels of all your drives for us to see? Thanks.
Did you try the website? I was able to find the spec sheets there quite easily through Google using “WD Color Spec Sheet” as search parameters.
WD Blue
https://www.wd.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-771436.pdf
WD Black
https://www.wd.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-771434.pdf
WD Red
https://www.wd.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-800002.pdf
WD Purple
https://www.wd.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-800012.pdf
WD Gold
https://www.wd.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-800074.pdf
From the spec sheets the 12TB Gold are expected to be noisier than the 4TB Red during read/write operations but at idle should be much quieter. However, these specifications probably were done computationally based on the design of the drive. Operationally, there are so many factors affecting the drive that it would be very difficult to predict how noisy the drives would be perceived. Also the drives are optimized for a specific use case so using one instead of another may mean your set-up is not optimized (although it should work).
Thanks! But super weird because these 12TB gold drives are being super noisy idle…y 4TB Red prosmale basiclaly zero noise and are great for that. It’s in an 8 bay Drobo…maybe certain bays make more noise than others? Maybe I should try to run the 4TB droves in the bays where the 12TB ones are in?
That’s worth a shot. You’re removing another potential factor affecting drive noise.
So I spoke to the support at Western Digital and they basically said the larger capacity drives with more larger platters play a role in the noise and also the faster the drive will play a factor as well. So 7200rpm larger drives like 10TB and 12TB I think are inevitably going to be on the noisier side of the drive spectrum I’m afraid. I did hear the Red series seems to be quieter than the Gold so am going to exchange my two 12TB Gold drives out for 10TB Red Pro’s and see what happens. Basically whatever happens with those I am keeping good or bad.
WD Red pro = 7200 RPM
WD Red = 5400 RPM
take that in mind
Yeah obviously then performance comes into play. I have to see what makes sense. I am thinking I give these a try. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1351960-REG/wd_wd101kfbx_10tb_red_pro_3_5.html
if you want quiet drives you need 5400RPM not 7200 RPM
Not sure why support would tell you that larger capacity drives have larger platters. More platters sure but not larger as all of them are using 3.5" disks.
