Are you using Btrfs on your DS918+?
Yes, btrfs in SHR-1 on Synology DS918+ with 4x WD Red Pro 256MB 8TB (WD8003FFBX-68B9AN0) – exhibits “beeping noises”.
Interesting to hear what their conclusion is. The person I spoke to said the opposite, and said its normal, which it clearly isn’t.
The CPU(Intel Atom C2538) in my NAS is not being stressed, so I don’t think that plays a role.
SHR-2 and btrfs here too, 8 drives in total, 4 of which are the WD 10 TB drives in question.
After doing some research, the only thing that is common between the 8TB and 10TB drives that are making this beeping noise is that they have the same HDD controller.
WD is using a new controller from an unknown company for these newer drives. The previous generation 8TB Red (WD80EFZX) which I have in a Synology NAS don’t make that noise, whereas the newer 8TB (WD80EFAX) drives do.
As to what action triggers that noise is still a mystery. If it is an operation/instruction that is built into the new controller then there is nothing you can do to get rid of the noise.
I don’t think WD knows what triggers that noise, because one time they say it is normal and then another engineer says it is not normal.
One person here said that some of his drives make that noise, and others don’t. Maybe they could check if the drives have different controllers?
Photo of controller here (the one with the white square).
It’s hard to pinpoint the cause of the noise without opening up the drive and looking at internals of it when it makes that noise.
Only WD can thoroughly investigate this noise but since it doesn’t effect drive performance or data integrity then it is not something they would bother investigating.
It’s easier for them to just classify it as normal drive operation.
I thought it was pretty much confirmed by WD that the noise is the wear leveling tech built in to the drive’s firmware… perhaps amplified by the helium interior of the 8/10TB drives.
My smaller Reds (2/3TB) don’t have helium and don’t have this sound at all.
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Where did they confirm that? If that’s the case, then the support tech and the engineers they spoke with are not aware of it or they are aware of it, at least on the engineering level and tries to sweep it under the rug.
The sound problem is very real, and at the moment I have another problem. One of my old 4TB drives are failing and it needs to be replaced, and the 10 TB reds are the most quiet drives of that size on the market. But there’s this problem, so I have to decide, either I go for another 10 TB red which most likely suffer from the same issue, but it’s is normally quieter than Seagate’s equivalent(IronWolf), which is known to be noisy in Synology NAS’s, from what I’ve read. Or go for the last option and possibly have one drive which is noisier than the reds most of the time and have WD noise issue on top of that.
I also had the same concerns when I needed to buy new drives for my new 8-bay NAS.
After comparing the WD 10TB Red with the 10TB IronWolf, I decided to go with WD because it is quieter, consumes less power, and is overall a better drive.
But I was worried about this noise issue. I ended up ordering 4x WD Red 10TB and I can tell you that they are VERY quiet. They make that weird noise once a day for about 10 seconds and that’s it. Even when they make that noise it is not really loud and it doesn’t bother me.
It sounds just like normal hard drive noise, not an unusual noise.
Don’t worry about this noise issue and go for the WD 10TB, there is nothing better, and I’m really happy with it. It is running about 10 degrees Celsius cooler than my non-helium WD 8TB hard drives and also quieter.
Thanks for the advice. My 4 TB drive is getting closer to death by each day, so I’m gonna buy another 10 TB drive.
I still have the same problem. I mentioned earlier that the noise stopped when I shut down the bittorrent clients and restarted them.
This goes for Plex as well, especially transcoding on plex causes the noise, leading me to believe that it doesn’t matter how you access the drive but where on the drive you are reading.
I can live with the bittorrents clients, restarting them regularly, but Plex is problematic. I can’t shut it down while friends and family is streaming videos from my server.
So this **** balls, I just hate that sound. It’s really really ****** annoying.
I can’t beleieve WD is just sticking their fingers in the ears and refuse to acknowledge the problem, the noise is not normal for a HDD, period. Something went wrong when they engineered the drive.
Hi Guys,
Just found this topic after having been driven mad bad this buzzing noise for so long
Here’s my setup :
NAS : Synology DS 1618+
HDD(s) : 5 x 4 TB WD RED, 1 x 10 TB WD Red
SSD(s) : 2 x Samsung 970 Pro 1TB ( for r/w caching purposes )
After investigating a bit, I confirm that the occasional buzzing noise comes from the single 10 TB drive ( the sealed helium drive )
This drive serve as a backup drive ( i.e : no running applications access it permanently ), and I haven’t found what triggers this buzzing noise.
The interesting thing is that … if the buzzing noise is present, triggering a quick Smart test on the drive makes it disappear … until the test is finished, and then the noise comes back
Really weird, I hope WD engineers will sort this out, and I really hope it isn’t a sign of an upcoming failure
Hey.
I have identical sound from WD DUO 20TB External drive in raid 0. It contains 2 x 10tb WD Red drives.
Sound continues after shutting down utorrent. No effect.
Tried to disable sleep/energy saving windows and in WD Drive Utilities. No effect.
Sound stops when any kind of "activity’ is present on the drives. Then starts again. Sound seems to be random. The drives can be silent for hours/day, then it starts again. No set time.
So when I first purchased my drive, I had it for a few days before the sound started. Contacted WD support and sent soundfile of the error. Technicians told me the sound wasnt normal and drive was faulty. RMA Approved.
Got my new external drive, copied everything over. Everything seemed nice, no sound. Sent my “RMA” drive back. A few days later, the drive AGAIN started that annoying sound.
Contact WD again, who ignored what I told them in my email and just gave some “standard” pre-written response. The sound was “normal” for that drive, and larger drives make more sound… yada yada yada.
Got triggered, replied with a more aggressive email stating sound was considered “faulty” on my first drive and now its “normal” all of a sudden. A new person replies to my RMA and tells me that there may be a problem with the power supply. Okej.
So they send me a new one, wait 5 days… and I get a power supply without EU “plug”.
Contact WD again, who sends me a new power supply, wait another 5 days. Now it contains the plug.
But changing it doesnt affect the sound.
Ive requested to exchange it for another type of drive, with nas capabilities instead of just external drive. I thought the “raidcontroller” inside the external drive was the problem. Since I have never ever had any sound from my 4-8TB drives inside my PC. Also have another 8TB WD drive, who doesnt make any sound. But, it isnt a RED drive. Im guessing its a white one.
But after reading this thread, I´m pretty sure the external drive isnt the problem. Instead it must have to do with something about “raid” and the drives themself. Some kind of firmware telling the drive to do stuff.
I dont understand how WD, who builds these drive… have 0 clue whats wrong and replies with different answers every time. Seems more like they just wanna avoid touching the problem.
Why not just examine it and if possible fix a firmware update or something?
Or just find the source of the sound and tell customers the correct reason why the drives are doing it,
if it should be considered “normal”.
Im my case, i have my drive in my living room where I watch movies and sit at the computer reading/gaming… and the sound is VERY annoying and can be heard even with headset on and when watching movies/series on the TV. I have to pull the plug to make it stop.
Anyone solved the issue? Guess not.
Compared to the old EIDE Fujitsu disk I owned which was so loud with seek activety, since then no disk has come close
if the disk is suspect, remove it and use diskpart, wipe the disk clean and then write zeros to be sure the media is clean and spare sectors are allocated as needed
I dont see the relevance in your reply. Fujitsu disks have nothing to do with WD Red making strange noises. We are talking about new disks here, new from factory. Wiping it wont do anything at all.
Since my latest reply to the topic, ive removed my 2 WD Red from the WD Duo external cabinett. They are no longer in raid, instead they are seperate disks.
2 days have passed without the noise appearing. So far, I can conclude that RAID is the problem behind the HDD´s acting wierd. It has to be something with firmware and some form of scheduled task when disk is setup in a raid.
Will reply again when more days have passed, but atm I advice against using WD RED 10TB drives in any kind of raid if you dont fancy hearing repeating error sounds from the WD-Duo/NAS/Computer.
Yeah, it does seem that way. But it’s so weird that we don’t hear more about this. It’s HDD’s made to function well in raids. There must be a lot 10 TB Red drives in raids out there. But I couldn’t find any mentions of this sound anywhere, so I had to make this thread. And clearly I’m not alone in experience this incredible invasive sound from these drives.
As you mention, something must be going on in this drives. If anything idle drives are more likely to produce this sound, based on my own experience and what people have shared in this thread.
My theory is that these noises are common for the 10 TB red drives(maybe even all WD’s helium drives), but perhaps people are using them in sound proofed towers or putting them in rooms where nobody spends their time?
I seems like most of us are using NAS boxes or external drive enclosures, neither of which has any sound proofing, and produce little to no sound, so the noise from the drives are mostly what we hear.
Its 3 days now, still no sound. Its been idle all day today. Nothing. Silent.
As you can read in this thread, it was terrible before.
WD themself ignore this problem and act that it doesnt exist. As my message before stated, 1 time they said my drive was defective, next time it was a “normal” sound. They ignore the issue. I hope this thread will help others to solve their problems, cause WD surely wont help. Really bad PR for such a great harddrive besides the sound issue.
Agree. Maybe the “happy” customers have their Duos or NAS in special off-limit rooms, or they just use them when they “backup” data and dont leave it online for long. Transfer files, pull from computer. Then u will never experience the annoying sound.
So concluded, if you experience this repeating invasive sound from your raid WD RED 10TB and cant live with it. Use them in a non-raid environment.
cheers for thread!
I just received two 12TB RED drives from the WD store, and haven’t as yet opened them. I was surprised by what I saw on the packing list and went searching for noise issues before I did so. Specifically, the first line referenced WD RED 12TB 5400rpm, but the second line said, “HGST NAS”. I purchased the WD Red because I wanted a virtually silent drive, but I had always been advised to stay away from HGST drives because they were too noisy for a home environment. The HGST acquisition was described as providing new technology for WD, but it looks like all they did was slap a RED label on a noisey HGST drive, and turn down the rpm. Is this what the problem is?
No, the 10TB drive is WD, not a HGST drive.
HGST, as a brand, no longer exists; everything that they make is sold under the Western Digital name. All I’m suggesting is that the newer, large, helium-filled WD drives could be based on HGST designs, and built at the former HGST factories, which would yield the same noise problems that existed before HGST was purchased by WD. Food for thought… ? ! ?
So what was the noise problems of the HGST drives? Because in this thread the discussion is about the WD RED 10TB idle noise problems in raid enviroment.
Whats that have to do with HGST? Did these drives have the same repeating sound or what? 
WD’s 10TB red drives are the most quiet 10TB on the market. The normal operating sound is not a problem, the noise described in this thread is. They produce a sound I have never heard from any other drive ever.
The HGST drives does have a louder sound profile, but in turn you get one of the most reliable drives on the market. HGST made, and are still making, drives primarily for the enterprise market where sound levels is not important.
HGST drives are still being sold under the HGST name.
Considering how quiet the WD 10TB drive is(when not making this horrid sound), I think it’s unlikely it’s a rebranded HGST enterprise drive.
