WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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batka
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by batka » Tue Apr 01, 2014 11:31 am

Hi!

Does anybody has some experience or feel, how the 3.5" WD Red 1TB compares to below 1-platter 2.5" drives, from noise perspective?

I mean these:
- WD Red 1TB WD10EFRX (3.5", 1 platter, spec says 21 dBA)
- Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500GB (2.5", 1 platter, spec says 17 dBA)
- Seagate Momentus SpinPoint M8 500GB (ST500LM012) (2.5", 1 platter, spec says 2.4 Bel) (This is actually Samsung)

I actually have 4 of the Toshiba MQ01ABD050, and another 4 of the Seagate ST500LM012. The Toshiba is definitely quieter indeed compared to the Seagate when talking about the idle hard disk spinning. However the Toshiba parks the head and have very often clicking sound. Parking can be easily disabled although, at least in Linux OS for the Toshiba.

How a WD Red 1 TB idle noise compares to such 2.5" drives, I wonder?

All are 1 platter HDD's....

EDIT: and I'm also interested in WD 2.5" drives:
- WD Scorpio Blue 500 GB WD5000LPVT (2.5", 7mm, 17 dBA)
- WD Scorpio Blue 500 GB WD5000LPVX (2.5", 7mm, 17 dBA)
- WD Scorpio Blue 500 GB WD5000MPCK (2.5", 5mm, 15 dBA!)

Are these WD Blue notebook disks quiet?

speculatrix
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by speculatrix » Tue Apr 01, 2014 11:16 pm

I recently fitted 16 of the 4GB Green drives into a backup server which runs Linux. I used the WD idle3ctl program to check and turn off idling, which was set to 80 seconds if I remember correctly, definitely much longer than the 8s that was once the factory settings on these drives.

Das_Saunamies
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Das_Saunamies » Wed Apr 02, 2014 5:38 am

speculatrix wrote:I recently fitted 16 of the 4GB Green drives into a backup server which runs Linux. I used the WD idle3ctl program to check and turn off idling, which was set to 80 seconds if I remember correctly, definitely much longer than the 8s that was once the factory settings on these drives.
Thanks for the information, this is really good to know. It seems WD is shuffling their pack regarding the firmware of Reds and Greens - might be removing overlap, might be something else...

Regarding 2.5" drives, I have no idea. I've never used them in desktop builds. In laptops I've found at least one Blue to be noisier than my current Green (WD10EARS-00Y5B1), but this was years ago.

speculatrix
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by speculatrix » Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:07 am

# for X in /dev/sd?; do echo "===$X===" ; idle3ctl -g $X; done
===/dev/sda===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdb===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdc===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdd===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sde===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdf===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdg===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdh===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdi===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdj===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdk===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdl===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdm===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdn===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdo===
Idle3 timer is disabled
===/dev/sdp===
Idle3 timer is disabled



all is happy :-)

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Vicotnik » Wed Apr 02, 2014 9:06 am

/dev/sdp.. respect, man. ;)

MikeMcr
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by MikeMcr » Thu Oct 30, 2014 2:26 am

I wish I had found this thread earlier. The "new" WD Reds are awful. Even with one drive the seek noise is annoying but when you load a NAS with them it is unbearable.

As has already been mentioned, this is made worse by the "background scan" noise every 10 seconds or so which means they are never quiet. I checked the wdidle utility and they are set correctly.

My "old" 3TB Reds are very quiet but I've now tried new 3, 4, 5 and 6TB models are they all have loud seeks.

Why on earth did WD stop the user from changing AAM settings? This would have been easy to fix if we could.

Any thoughts on Seagate NAS drives seek noise compared to the new Reds?

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Das_Saunamies » Thu Oct 30, 2014 2:55 am

Still don't have any new Reds to compare with, but I'm quite pleased with my Seagate ST3000VN000-1H4167. It's not as quiet as the old Reds, but it's well within tolerance range sitting under my desk in the workspace - it lets out grumbling noises and idles slightly louder*.

(* slightly louder than its RAID partner, a WD30EFRX-68AX9N0)

kamina
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by kamina » Mon Apr 13, 2015 2:02 am

RomanD wrote:All new Reds in sale are now the louder ones. I'm not sure if the difference begins with NasWare 2.0 vs NasWare. I think they did it to increase performance (they must internally disable Automatic Acoustic Management). By HDTune, average seek is better now - 16 vs 21 ms, but hell they are so loud now, if you have Nas at home, especially fanless Nas like the Qnap's one, you will hear the difference.

As I found, all of them performing Background Media Scan on idle every 10 seconds, that is fine, but only on old Reds you can't hear it (as you can't hear seeking).

I tested 4TB made on february 2014 (I have no model number because I returned it), 3TB made also on 02/2014 has model WD30EFRX-68EUZN0. As I checked web about 4TB, they should be loud from beginning (25/28 dBA).

I found WD made at least one thing "quiet" - they changed pdf datasheets on their web site, without a notice. Here is current datasheet compared to 2013 one, what I downloaded via archive.org:

Idle/Seek (dBA)
2013
2014

WD30EFRX
23/24
23/27

WD20EFRX
23/24
23/27

WD10EFRX
21/22
21/24

I think your review should be updated, because now everywhere are reviewed older Reds, and people buying them when they need quiet Nas.
I'm really surprised there is less talk about this here. I mean it looks like there was a major change in the noise level of one of the top ranked drives on this site and even the (outdated?) reviews don't contain a warning?

rotor
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by rotor » Mon Apr 13, 2015 2:50 am

I just added a new 6TB Red alongside my 2 x 3TB Reds purchased 2 years ago, and to be honest, I can't hear any difference whatsoever in the overall noise signature (it is a ProLiant Micro Server G7). While I was waiting for the new 6TB I briefly used a 2TB "Enterprise" Seagate SATA I have spare, and that is one noisy drive. The 6TB Red is silent by comparison.

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by speculatrix » Mon Apr 13, 2015 3:59 am

I built a home file server with the Gigabyte GA-J1900D3V and a pair of WD Red 3TB drives, and more recently bought a Lenovo TS140 "server" and fitted that with a second drive, also a WD Red 3TB.

I wouldn't say the drives are particularly noisy, the fans in the TS140 drown out all the other sounds.

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by kamina » Tue Apr 14, 2015 12:09 am

Interestingly it seems that a lot of people who have been complaining about the loud clunking sound seem to have RMA'd the drives and received more silent ones in return.

casebuyer
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by casebuyer » Wed Oct 05, 2016 2:01 am

they say new 2016 wd series are noisier than 2014 ones

Jose Hidalgo
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Jose Hidalgo » Tue Oct 25, 2016 7:19 pm

And who is "they" ? Commenting without proof is meaningless. We need tests, we need serious results, not just "they say".
You wouldn't happen to be working for WD's competition, would you ? :mrgreen: :lol: :wink:

pumpal
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by pumpal » Wed Nov 02, 2016 5:51 pm

I came across that thread while seeking information on the WD Red noise and am specially registering to commit my report.
I have recently purchased a QNAP TS-251+ and put 2x 4TB REDs (WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0 fw: 82.00A82) in it.
They are really loud while seeking. It's not that audible during the day except if you are not looking especially to hear it, but late at night is really annoying and disturbing.
They are constantly doing something even if nothing apparent is working on the NAS (no media is being streamed, no files are transferred, etc- you know what I mean).
Even if that constant activity without apparent reason is QNAP OS fault, I am still disappointed by these drives as as being advertised as NAS optimized one would think they should've take into account that people will use them in their rooms sometimes... I will be looking at replacing them either with some Seagate NAS series or Toshiba greens (3TB max capacity unfortunately but they never seek as loud as this *****). Pity.

Jose Hidalgo
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Jose Hidalgo » Wed Nov 02, 2016 8:40 pm

Are you sure that Toshiba and Seagate won't be louder ? :roll:

Take a look at this : http://www.hardware.fr/articles/888-15/ ... nores.html
It's in french, but just look at the graph. Here's the juicy part :

Seeking noise :
- WD Red 3TB Nasware 1.0 : 23.8 dB
- WD Red 3TB Nasware 2.0 : 24.9 dB
- Toshiba 3TB ABA : 25.3 dB
- WD Green 3TB : 25.6 dB
- Seagate 3TB NAS : 27.1 dB
- ... WD Red 3TB Nasware 3.0 : don't know unfortunately, but I doubt it would be higher than 27.1 dB when previous versions were at 23.8 and 24.9 respectively.

My point being : if the WD Reds are too loud for you, chances are that other brands will be even louder, unfortunately. :(
For the record I need to buy 2 silent 3 TB drives before Christmas.
I have no idea of what I should buy either, but right now WD Reds look like the "lesser evil", don't they ? :?

Other solutions include "hacking" the WD Reds (see here for details : https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?th ... -exe.18171 )... assuming that it still works of course.
I'd be happy if you reported some success, it would mean hope for all of us. ;)

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Das_Saunamies » Thu Nov 03, 2016 1:50 am

pumpal wrote:Even if that constant activity without apparent reason is QNAP OS fault, I am still disappointed by these drives as as being advertised as NAS optimized one would think they should've take into account that people will use them in their rooms sometimes...
I'm not so sure about this one.

WD Greens were clearly geared towards close-proximity personal use in desktops. The result was fast spindown and subtle seeks. The Red series is labeled as a server drive, and in server-like use you *don't* want drives to spin down quickly and may need to serve multiple clients/connections simultaneously, so you can't take your time with the seeks (check out the old WD soft-seek videos for reference). This is good for anyone running an actual server and not just a drive-on-a-wire, bad for silence enthusiasts. They're still fairly decent consumer-friendly compromises compared to enterprise drives intended for Real™ server use.

Step 1 is selecting silent components. Step 2 is silencing what is left. It's the cycle of silence. Placing a tiny, plastic-shell HDD-based server where you sleep is pretty much asking for trouble, as I quickly found out with my NAS. They definitely like to run their drives even when there is no apparent client load on the LAN. :?

The review Jose linked from 2013 is probably still valid, but I would veer towards the SPCR reviews first, unless you absolutely must find a model not tested on SPCR. Not like much has changed in the HDD space in the last five years or more, and we've had a few reviews in 2014 and 2015 at least. :mrgreen:

PS. Sticking non-NAS drives (such as silence-oriented desktop drives or laptop drives) in a NAS can have its benefits and caveats. Their action may or may not be quieter, but they may have to spin up and down more frequently or park and load constantly (more of an issue with 2.5" drives). Even if these pose no serious issue for longevity, it may be more annoying than the previous seeks. This has obviously been previously discussed, but it's a good point to bring up when considering purpose of use.

Edit: PS, typo.
Last edited by Das_Saunamies on Thu Nov 03, 2016 7:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

pumpal
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by pumpal » Thu Nov 03, 2016 2:29 am

Thanks for the responses guys. Definitely will read the "Hacking" link.

It has been quite some time since I had a 3.5" drive in my home (a desktop PC in other words), but the last one that I had was some Seagate 1Tb @7200 and I remember I noticed that it didn't do that "krrr krrr krrrrr" noise while operating. Granted the PC case was not dead silent as the 251+ is and the REDs are barely doing ANY spin sound, while the Seagate might have had a little.
But then most of the 2.5" laptop drives do not do a "krr krr kr krrrr" as well - my backup drive is a WD Passport 2tb 2.5" external drive and it is completely silent too.
My expectations were based on that I guess. Though the point that a "NAS optimized" drive can be meant more towards "NAS as a File Server" meaning of the therm is actually valid now as I am thinking.
Oh well, I will report if I decide to try whats in the "Hacking WD..." link and have any success with it :) .

br,

Jose Hidalgo
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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Jose Hidalgo » Thu Nov 03, 2016 3:42 am

Thanks for your interesting reply in this topic :)

So, long question short : how should we do if we're looking for silent 3TB hard disks for a PC that will run 24/7, at about 1m-1m50 from my ears ? What would be best for that particular use ?
I know that's unusual, but that's the way my PC runs.

Thank you. :)

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Vicotnik » Thu Nov 03, 2016 7:12 am

Put it in a Scythe Quiet Drive or similar to start with. I keep one of those on the shelf just in case. And then maybe suspend it using elastic cords.

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Das_Saunamies » Thu Nov 03, 2016 7:29 am

Meeting expectations is difficult, and so is interpreting marketing. Can hardly blame someone for having high hopes (and standards!). :wink:

Please do report back any experiences in User Reviews! The community could definitely use help in the absence of primary reviews.

The first Reds no doubt got some good silence genes from the Green line, but the later generations saw clear differentiation between Green and Red - and now Greens (HDDs) have been eaten up by the Blue product line! I think WD is betting on SSD being the new Silent, because there the Green name still exists.

Regarding high storage capacity in workstations, I would bet on the low-RPM WD Blues, as they are probably still Greens at heart. Then slap on the necessary insulation (or switch cases) if that is not enough (á la the Scythe Quiet Drive suggested by Vicotnik, or DIY). The Toshiba E300 series is also advertised as "low temperature, low noise", but I have no data or experience with them. Seagate does not seem to have a dedicated silent line of drives, and they own Samsung's HDD business now.

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Jose Hidalgo » Thu Nov 03, 2016 8:56 am

Oh, right, Blue is the new Green ! :mrgreen: Happened a year ago or so. Thanks WD for the headache ! :D

The only downside I see with the Blue is that they are not supposed to be up 24/7.
Regardless of that, I'd really like to compare the noise of the new 3TB Blue (5K rpm of course) to the noise of the 3TB Red (Nasware 3.0).
That would really make an interesting review ! Anyone @ SPCR up to the challenge ? ;)

It's frustrating to be willing to buy a 5K hard drive and NOT know exactly which one is really the quietest one as of today...

PS : and the Scythe Quiet Drive doesn't seem to be sold anymore. :( Any replacement ?

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Das_Saunamies » Thu Nov 03, 2016 1:00 pm

If Quiet Drive is not available, https://www.endpcnoise.com/hard-drive-enclosures lists just about every kit I know of. I also checked out http://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/ar ... -test.html, and they point to the Grow Up Japan Smart Drive Classic as the best replacement for the Quiet Drive noise-wise, although it does get a little toasty under load. The mCubed Vertical Silence looks best overall (noise and temperature), but it seems even rarer than the Smart Drives.

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Jose Hidalgo » Thu Nov 03, 2016 3:17 pm

I am quite pissed off that I need to revert to HD enclosures just because there's not a single "silent" 3TB HD drive on the planet right now.
Especially when there used to be a couple years ago, with the WD Red Nasware 1.0 (which I suppose is impossible to find today). That pisses me off even more.

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Das_Saunamies » Fri Nov 04, 2016 3:36 am

It is a sad state of affairs indeed when manufacturers see speed as a better sales argument than silence for HDDs. In the age of the SSD it should be the other way around - your only advantage would be to make a quiet drive, because it will always lose out to an SSD in pure performance. I don't know what was wrong with having a dedicated pure performance product line and every other line being geared towards something else.

I don't know how good or bad the current generation of Blue-Greens is, but I'm quite happy with the 1 TB Green sitting in the Define Mini suspended under my desk. I can't hear it, whereas I can hear the gen-1 Red in the NAS in the living room (well, mostly I hear the seeks of the Seagate it's paired with, but you get the idea).

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Jose Hidalgo » Fri Nov 04, 2016 6:06 am

I am currently leaning towards a Thermaltake Core V21 case (not exactly a silence-oriented case) :
http://www.thermaltake.com/db/products/ ... 1/main.jpg
Not a lot of space inside, and not a lot of space for drives either, just two 3.5" slots (and three 2.5" slots on the other side) :
http://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploa ... 960144.jpg

The CPU will be cooled by a NoFan CR80-EH, so no noise on that side.
There will only be the intake 200mm fan, and an outtake 140mm fan right over the CPU.
Plus the PSU fan and the GPU fans of course.But the PSU will be quiet, and the GPU will have a silent mode.

That's why I need to be sure that my two 3TB HDDs will be silent enough.
My system SSD will be, for sure. :mrgreen: :lol: :wink:

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Jose Hidalgo » Mon Nov 07, 2016 5:39 am

Small update. I guess there is a trade-off to be made here for a 24/7 desktop drive :

- WD Green/Blue : head parking = 8 sec / TLER = 30 sec
- WD Red : head parking = 5 min / TLER = 7 sec (quite mandatory for RAID environments)

8 sec is nonsense for 24/7 use : the LCC will go up like crazy and soon reach 200K or 300K, as confirmed by many users.

If we value silence over performance, my ideal "quiet 24/7 desktop drive" would be : head parking = 5 min (or more, or disabled, I don't care about a few more watts) / TLER = 30 sec (standard value for non-RAID environments, less risk of data corruption, more chances of recovering data)

So, is there still a way that we can change any of these parameters TODAY ? (either head parking or TLER)
- WDTLER doesn't seem to work on newer drives. It has been discontinued, and WD warned that it could damage the drives. But why would setting TLER to 30 sec damage any drive ? :shock:
Setting it to 0 would be bad, I get that (see here : http://www.overclock.net/t/1267434/wd-r ... n-raid-bad / except for surveillance drives, e.g. WD Purple, which have 0 by default). But 30 sec couldn't damage drives... could it ?
- Does the WDIDLE / WD5741 hack still work on 2016 drives (e.g. Nasware 3.0, etc.) or not ? https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?th ... exe.18171/

This thing is driving me crazy. I have to buy my two 3TB drives, and I still don't know what to buy, really ! :evil:

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Das_Saunamies » Mon Nov 07, 2016 6:39 am

I'd say stop worrying and have backups. Leave firmware tweaking to hobby rigs, and you'll save trouble and grief.

Backups you should keep in any case, as data without copies is less than a second away from total annihilation. Then, if the drive really does fail too soon, it will be within warranty (2-3 for most basic drives; all should have 5 IMO), you keep your data (as backups), and the RMA means you lose no money.

If the drive lasts you more than those 2-3 years - which is to be expected and a pretty long time - then you'll be wiser, wealthier and may have a better selection to choose from when you need to replace it.

Whichever scenario transpires, this solves your current storage issue. Go silence first, other attributes second. :mrgreen:

This is my Green:
Image

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Jose Hidalgo » Mon Nov 07, 2016 7:29 am

Thanks :) I agree with you, so maybe I should tell you more about my plans :

I always do backups. Of everything. That's like computer 101, lol.
My two new 3TB drives will of course by backuped, I have already older drives for that purpose (one 2TB drive, two 1.5TB drives, and three 1TB drives, so 8TB total).

----------

My long-term goal (and yours too probably) is to have one day everything on SSD.
Which means I'll need at least 6TB SSD capacity (1x6TB, 2x3TB, 3x2TB, 4x1.5TB, whatever whill be cheapest in the future). Maybe even more by then.
Performance will never be an issue, only long-term reliability.
Unfortunately large SSDs are way too expensive right now, and they will continue to be for the next few years. Prices are dropping slower than anticipated.

So my current goal is to hold on with my new 3TB drives for as many years as needed, until the SSD prices reaches the current HDD prices (200-250 € for 6TB).
That could take a lot of time (5 years ? 10 years ?), so I'll need to take good care of my new 3TB drives. I'm not buying them for 2 or 3 years, they may need to last a lot more.
That time could be shorter IF a new HDD technology makes its way to mass production, allowing much higher HDD capacities, consequently lowering HDD price per TB, and as a side effect forcing SSD manufacturers to lower their prices too. :D But let's not count on that right now.

That's why I need to be sure that I'm making the best possible choice now : I need (1) long-term 24/7 desktop reliability and (2) quietness. I don't care about performance. :)

----------

Small details like the LCC (hence drive parking) can become important over time, especially for 24/7 use. Other details like TLER may be less important since the drives will be backuped anyway. ;)

Bottom line : I would go blindly with the WD Reds right now, because they are intended for 24/7 use, and because of their 5 min head parking time.
WD Green/Blues may be quieter (not even sure) but they're not meant for 24/7 and their 8 sec head parking time is a no-go for me.

Only reason I haven't bought WD Reds yet is because they seem to have become louder with the Nasware releases (if only we could change our Nasware version I'd go back to 1.0, lol)
But even with Nasware 3.0, the WD Reds seem to be quieter overall than other models. Only the head parking noise (noise, not time) seems to be an issue.

Only after buying them will I be able to decide if that noises (seeking, parking) are an issue for me in my environment or not :
- If they're not, then good.
- If they are, then I'll need to find a way to deal with that for a large number of years. Hence my question about tweaking the head parking time, or permanently disabling it. Or about finding silent hard drive cases, which we can't seem to find these days (plus they're ridiculously expensive).

I hope this explains things better. :)

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Vicotnik » Mon Nov 07, 2016 7:46 am

Why not make it a goal to place the spinning storage in the other room? I would not want all my storage to be SSD, I don't trust the tech enough for that. I want SSDs close to me, HDDs out of hearing range and lots of redundancy.

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Re: WD Green vs. WD Red for quietness?

Post by Jose Hidalgo » Mon Nov 07, 2016 8:04 am

Long story short : I've already tried that and I'm not satisfied anymore. ;)

I have already a home-made NAS (Debian-based, CLI only) since 2008 or so, where my three 1TB drives are mounted (in RAID 5, the fourth RAID 5 drive being a 1.5TB).
The NAS is in another room, so yes, it doesn't bother me with noise. :D
But its network throughput is just too slow for me for everyday use, sorry. Apps using network-stored data (e.g. foobar2000 with 50K songs) take ages to launch when they launch much faster when the data is stored locally.
Plus my NAS is too much hassle for everyday use (power on, wait, launch Putty, login, mount crypted partition, use via Samba, then after use, launch Putty again, login again, power off, not to mention maintenance and annual power costs). I'm tired of using it.

So I have decided to throw away my NAS (final decision).
From now on, all my storage will be in my main computer (so 1 SSD for OS, and two 3TB drives for storage).
And my main computer will act as file server for my other network-connected computer (my laptop).

PS : SSDs really are reliable, especially for storage since there's mostly reading and little writing. Just put them on a UPS to prevent data corruption and it will be OK. And do backups, exactly like you would for HDDs. I would go 100% SSD today if I could. Sooner or later I will (when the prices drop), and believe me, sooner or later you will too. ;)

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