Strange noise coming from 10TB drives (WD100EFAX)

I am having the same problem, with two 10 TB WD Red WD100EFAX drives in a Synology DS918+ installed as SHR-1 with btrfs.

When I put my hands on the sides/top of the Synology enclosure, the noise goes away until I remove my hands. I wedged a towel in between the top of the enclosure and the shelf above it in my desk and that seems to help, but the sound always comes back eventually.

I wonder if it would help to add an SSD as a read-only cache in the DS918+? Has anyone tried that? (or, is anyone experiencing this issue even though you have one in your synology NAS?)

Hi Gosko

Are you sure it isn’t the more common vibration issue? I’ve used one of the two parts of a velcro to dampen the vibrations and it’s working well. I followed these instructions: https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/2tc4og/synology_and_vibration_problems_my_velcro_solution/
And my NAS is resting on sound dampening material, so any vibrations shouldn’t travel very far.

I can’t say I’ve noticed that it had any effect on the noise described in this thread, but next time, and there will be a next time, the nightmarish sound is back I will try do use my hands on the enclosure and see if there is a change.

I don’t have a cache ssd so I don’t know, but I don’t think it will help. Based on my experience the lack of activity does increase the likelyhood for the sound to arise, and a read only cache would just reduce the activity, I would assume? I’m just thinking aloud. We still don’t know what causes the sound, so I guess everything could be possible? :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hi @BabaBooey,

It might be the vibration issue but the sound clip you posted sounded fairly similar to mine. Here is a recording of mine:

Synology DS918+ with 10TB WD Red drive noise

From about 0:15 to 0:28 of my clip I put my hand on the NAS enclosure, which muted most of the noise.

The sound isn’t especially loud or intense but it’s enough to be super annoying since I work at home and my office is otherwise very quiet. Before I bought this system I had a DS212 with some smaller drives and it was almost silent.

My NAS generally isn’t very busy so I thought the activity might be caused by filesystem indexers or online backup jobs that poke around the filesystem intermittently, which is why I thought adding an SSD cache might help. But I guess frequently used files and fs metadata are already cached in RAM, so maybe the SSD is unnecessary.

Hi @gosko

Luckily for you, that sound is caused by vibration, it’s not the same sound.
So by using the velcro fix previously mentioned, the vibration sound will be reduced. I own two Synology NAS products and it worked well on both of them :slight_smile:

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this is vibration only, as Syno owner you can find help for such issue at independent SynoForum.com. We aren’t affiliated Syno channel, then we have really wide support range, also fir networking and Dockers.

re SSD cache:

  • from basics point of you SSD cache will never solve the vibrations.
  • from operation point of view- SSD cache will help you solve transfer speed. But you have count with SSDcache/RAM ratio. Nothing is for free. Also what kind of SSD and what capacity.
    Join us for pro-grade help.

You were able to solve the noise that appears with the velcro? Do you use the HDD on a NAS or pc?

Yes, many of the synology NAS products have problems with vibrations in the chassis, the velcro(the soft bit) on the hdd cages dampens it. But this thread is not about vibrations, so please do not confuse the two. The mystery sound is another animal entirely.

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So @BabaBooey, I’ve been reading through the thread (but not all of it) and based on what I’m reading, it’s not a good idea to get the wd80efax, wd100efax, wd101efax because they exhibit this noise issue, which wd continues to ignore. Do you agree? (I just want to make sure I understood correctly).

Nah, u got it wrong. It depends on what u are going to use the drives for and in what enviroment. If your plan is to use the drive in a raid setup, then u will have to consider if you can handle the annoying sound or not. Depends where your raid computer or nas is located in your home, if its going to annoy you. Its nothing wrong with the drive if we talk performance, its probably one of the best drives out there.

Im running my drives as solo inside my computer, since the sound drove me crazy.

As solo drives, they are completely silent. Its the raids that make it do wierd stuff.

I’m not sure if someone has reported issues for the newer wd101efax drives here? Might be wrong.

If one is considering Reds though, I guess we can assume that the person is going to run them in RAID, since the firmware is optimized for that. For desktop use you should probably consider Blues, Greens, or Blacks, depending on your needs/use case/budget. Not saying that you can’t use Reds by themselves. Just saying that if you’re buying new you should probably get the appropriate tool for the job. :slight_smile:

Like the other guys is saying, it all depends where and how you are using the drives. If you are gonna use them in raid, there is a high likelihood you will get the noise, but if you have a dedicated space for the server, where the noise won’t bother anyone, then buy them. The noise doesn’t affect the longevity nor the performance of the drives.
If you are planning to have the drives running in a raid and the server is close to you, then I would not recommend the drives. Especially if we are talking about a NAS from Synology, QNAP and so on, they don’t have any soundproofing. If you build your own, good soundproofing might help a great deal, but I haven’t used the drives in a proper soundproofed case myself, so I can’t attest to it.

When it comes to WD101EFAX, I don’t think we have any confirmed cases, but I’m not holding my breath.
Anyway, that model is using air instead of helium, and it’s much louder. But if it doesn’t produce the noise it might be a reasonable trade off? It’s too loud for me anyway :frowning:

Ah, I see. My bad, so it’s only RAID then? I only plan on buying one and putting it in an external enclosure, so I don’t think the RAID issue is a problem. I do plan on seeding torrents on it though, but that won’t be a problem if I’m not using multiple drives in RAID right?

@BabaBooey: You’re right about the 101EFAX at least based on specs, that’s too noisy to have near to me. If you guys have determined the issue is 100% with running RAID then I guess I have no issue getting a WD80EFAX or WD100EFAX as a single drive.

Yeah, it seems that way. Then u should just buy a WD Mybook, if they still got the RED´s in them. Dont know atm. But earlier it was cheaper to buy a external WD Mybook then buying and internal hdd. Should google it abit and examine :wink:

I was looking into that but there’s little information (that I could find anyway) on whether the drives in them are SMR or PMR/CMR, and after my last experience with a seagate SMR I really don’t want to deal with them. And there’s even less information on how loud they are, though I would think if designed for an enclosure beside your desk they wouldn’t be all that loud. So I think I’d rather be safe then sorry and buy an internal hard drive first.

when you have linux, or directly by SSH in your NAS:
hdparm -I /dev/sda
or use … sdb or sdc … up to number of your HDD

you can get any details about the disk, include:

  • model number
  • serial number
  • firmware revision
  • used heads (the you can get used platters by = heads/2)
  • device size by 1024x1024 (means RAW capacity)
    then you can get a RAW density of the platter by = RAW capacity / number of platters
    then you can compare two same disk drives if it’s same or not
    it’s also good base for an SMR/CMR investigation when you aren’t sure

more details you can find here

Great, thanks – I did the velcro thing and the most annoying part of the sound is gone though it’s still noisier than I would like. I think I will have to punch a hole in my wall and run some cables downstairs so I don’t have to keep listening to it in my office :frowning_face:

Thanks for your help! Sorry to have hijacked your thread but the sounds did seem similar to me.

No worries :slight_smile:
I’m glad to be of some help :wink:

I have the exactly the same issue with the same device my book 10TB external hard drive, never had such issue before.

Any news on this? Is that sound really a feature in 8 TB and up capacity Reds? Very saaaaaad if that seem to be a common case… This post literally made me cancel my intention to buy 6x8 TB Reds, because I think that sound is far from normal, especially when the noise is multiplied by multiple drives doing the same thing together.

This is often related to a raid enviroment. Using the discs solo inside the computer, seems to solve the problem in some cases. No guarantees tho. :stuck_out_tongue: