Seagate announced their new roster of 10TB drives today. An impressive lineup. They also revived the Barracuda name, and added two more: Ironwolf for NAS and Skyhawk for surveillance. Not bad choices , relevant to their intended functions.

I almost feel like the link to the press release at the bottom was redundant. It's nice to see that there was a comment in the original post of the forum thread, but most casual browser won't see that unless they specifically click through to the forum.

Ask for some sample mike, would be great to see the noise qualities of this new Helium 10tb drives.

What are the largest capacity hard drives currently being manufactured? My understanding (source) is that big purchasers like Dropbox, Google, Amazon, etc. have access to 14TB drives, but maybe they're now receiving 16/18TB models?

Maybe... or not: https://storageservers.wordpress.com/2016/04/14/hard-drives-capacity-to-reach-14tb-soon/

think of all the cat photos I could store.....

No articles for a month and a half, and all we get is a press release?

That's disappointing.

donate some cash, mofo, or don't bitch

And perhaps a bit more importantly for us silent PC ethusiasts, the monster 16TB Samsung SSD is also available... for a cool $10k IIRC. I wish Samsung had a competitor in that space so prices would plummet. At least 0.5 / 1 TB-ish SSDs are not akin to a highway robbery any more, they only cost the same as a 6-8TB hdd...

FYI, a sneak preview: Measured at 1m distance, neither of the 2 Seagate 10TB samples on hand (Barracuda & Ironwolf) raised the ambient level of the anechoic chamber by more than 1 dBA. They increased overall level to around 12 dBA, from the usual 11 dBA. Remember, these are 7200rpm drives!!!

yowsa.

damn thats really good news.... cant wait to see the full review.

I hope WD gives you guys some samples of their heliums also, im really looking forward to the WD 8TB Red 5400 rpm SATA III 3.5" Internal NAS HDD, i heard that helium drives has its own signature, like a small chrill that its high pitch, i still fear them some, waiting for SPCR to approved them.

That's wild sound reading!

Press release - and nothing in it 'bout heat. Meh...

Received a 10TB Skyhawk yesterday. First impressions - much greater vibration and motor noise than my WD Red 6TB and 8TBs, but pretty quiet seeking. It's not a particularly loud drive broadly speaking, and isn't audible in my closed Fractal Mini on a carpeted floor from a couple of metres away in a quiet room, so I find it just within the threshold of acceptability, but it might not cut it if you have a less well-dampened case or sit closer to it.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there as it's hard to find info on noise ever since old school HDDs became an afterthought for reviewers. Have a 12TB IronWolf on the way and will give my impressions of that when it arrives.

Thanks for the feeback sneaker

Very interested on this drive, looking forward to your opinion.

Second impression, sitting here on a quiet morning hearing an annoying hum, is less positive. Seems now that the drive has 'settled' a bit on its mount, it's transferring more vibration to the rest of the chassis. I'll be moving it to another bay when the 12TB IronWolf arrives and will report if that makes a difference, but I'd now describe the 10TB Skyhawk as a risky option even for a Fractal Mini. As I said originally, the vibration level, for my one at least, is much higher than my WD Reds (one 6TB, two 8TB) - but the case was initially doing a good enough job preventing it from being in issue.

Vibration continues to be a significant issue with the 10TB Skyhawk, and contrary to my first impressions, motor noise has also been audible from a couple of metres away (sometimes the noise fluctuates up and down over a period of around 6 seconds, which makes it more noticable).

I've now had several days with the 12TB IronWolf. Just been down on the floor next to the open case listening to each drive (spinning them up and down individually), as well as at a distance with the case closed. The 12TB IronWolf's vibration is much lower than the 10TB Skyhawk's - probably in the same league as my 8TB Reds - and its motor noise also seems lower. However, its seek noise seems to be a problem. Playing various Blu-rays from the drive, it makes an audible seek noise about twice a second, vs. the Skyhawk's more sporadic, less noticable seeks. I expect some noise for some types of random seeks, but not for that sort of sequential read. Searched for info on AAM settings for these drives, but it looks like that's not a thing any more.

Seems this is my first big HDD upgrade disappointment in the seven years since I got my Fractal Mini. It's been through 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 6TB and 8TB WD Greens and Reds, and a 3TB Barracuda, basically on a highest-capacity-at-the-time basis, and they've all been unproblematic.

Standard disclaimer about this being based on a sample size of one for each drive.

@sneaker thanks for your feedback on both seagates, kinda thought it was going be a little noisy specially being so big and having so many platters, i might try one of those soon though, the demand for space is quickly growing with 4k blu rays. But im also interested on trying the WD 10TB Red 5400 rpm SATA III 3.5" Internal NAS HDD, we should see soon the 12tb version soon since seagate is already there.

Spent quite some time yesterday softening the mount for the Skyhawk using some old Spire Soundpad foam, since the Fractal's rubber grommets aren't the best. It reduced the transfer of vibration, but not enough, and it's a moot point anyway as the motor noise alone is above my threshold (same is unfortunately true for the 12TB IronWolf, even though it's a bit quieter).

Going to pull them out and return to the Red 8TB + 8TB + 6TB setup. Been an expensive and time-consuming lesson, but hopefully someone benefits from the info.

This comparison may prove informative. I must admit I'd be interested to see how the WD Red and Hitachi He10 compare.

As it happens I now have a 10TB WD Red ordered thanks to a well-timed deal. It's what I'd have preferred in the first place, but its price tag was previously 25% more than the best price for the Skyhawk, so I decided to take a gamble on the latter.

On further observation, the 12TB IronWolf's idle noise level is fine, and the half-second interval seek noises as described previously seem to have been an anomaly. Not sure why I came to think the 12TB IronWolf's motor noise was too high - may have gotten confused at various times about which drive was spinning.

Regarding the 10TB He10, I actually have two of those, used for cold backups. Never been mounted in my system, but based on experience with them in the internal mobile rack, I'd say they're among the noisier drives I've used.

Hope you share some feedback on it, this is probably right now the drive that i would like to use if i upgrade my server but still a little to high, but certainly would be great to hear is a quiet drive.

I just saw this review of the WD Red 10TB, that stated that its CPU utilisation is 70 times that of the Red 6TB, and that this means that it "would not make for a very good desktop drive". I'd be interested to see how much of a problem this turns out to be in a real life usage. It'd be a pity if this turns out to be a major flaw in what looks like being an otherwise quiet and cool-running drive.

WD Red 10TB: Very positive first impressions for vibration and motor noise. It does however make the characteristic click/clunk about every 5 seconds when idle, also observed in the Red 6TB and 8TB. Will follow up if I have anything to add after more time with it.


Not familiar with IOMeter usage so didn't have the patience to try to reproduce with that, but did record video of a CrystalDiskMark run on both my old 6TB Red and the new 10TB, with Task Manager's monitor running alongside it. CPU usage hovered around 1-2% for the whole ~5 minute test. This shows the last 60 seconds:

https://imgur.com/a/vF8LXVD

Not having much luck with the latest crop of drives, it seems. Am sitting here late at night when it's nice and quiet, but being taunted by a continual tick about once a second, and it's not the 12TB IronWolf or a wall clock.

It's the 10TB Red, apparently performing some sort of background maintenance internal to the drive, as I haven't been accessing it and it's persisted even after dismounting the sole VeraCrypt partition that's on it. The drive's refusing to spin down while it's doing this, despite hard disk power management timeout being set to a few minutes.

So far, it's persisted for over half an hour, with a reprieve of a minute or two a couple of times before it started up again. Not sure if the 8TB Red had the same behaviour, but if it did, the noises weren't audible from 2-3 metres away as is the case here.

Has anybody tried the 10/12TB Barracuda Pros? The review I linked to above listed the 10TB as quiet (as well as the best performer overall), though they are a bit pricier than the other Seagates.

Someone else can buy a Barracuda Pro. I've done my part

The tick-every-second continues this morning, so it's apparently gone all night, except now I'm not sure which drive is doing it - it felt like the 10TB Red last night, but had my finger against the drives again this morning and frankly I can't discern. Still can't tell with my face planted into the carpet and ear against the drive bays.

Both drives were still spinning despite the power management setting, with the 10TB Red doing its usual 5-second interval clunk.

Think the only way I'm going to figure it out is to pull the plug on one of the drives and observe the other individually for an extended period. I've had the 12TB IronWolf for three weeks and the 10TB Red for one week, yet this problem only just started last night, so I wouldn't necessarily get an answer on the first day.

Well, got my answer quicker than expected - the 10TB Red is indeed the ticking-every-second culprit. Powered down, yanked the power from the 12TB IronWolf, powered back up and didn't have to wait long for the ticking to start.

Now I have the 10TB Red unplugged to observe the 12TB IronWolf in isolation.

Sad to conclude with the 10TB WD Red, 12TB Seagate IronWolf, and 10TB Seagate Skyhawk having all proven unacceptable in one way or another.

The 10TB Red made the most promising first impression with very low motor noise and vibration, but turned out a major disappointment, with its maddeningly noticable 'background maintenance' noises described previously.

The 12TB IronWolfs (I ended up with two) were impressive in terms of vibration (similar to the Red) and motor noise (slightly higher than the Red) but exhibited persistent, noisy seeks in some circumstances (e.g. playing a Blu-ray with MPC-HC or VLC).

The 10TB Skyhawk was the worst, with its high vibration. Perhaps my particular unit was a dud and not representative of Seagate's 10TB drives in general. Not sure if it exhibited the same noisy seeks issue as the 12TB IronWolf, as the vibration ended up overshadowing anything else.

I'll also mention the 10TB Hitachi He10 as a side note, as I have experience with two of those. They're used as offline backup drives inserted into my system's mobile rack as needed, and the rack doesn't dampen vibration and noise as well as the cases drive bays, so it's hard to make a fair comparison with the other drives. But when they've been left idle in the rack, I'm sure I've occasionally noticed the same 'background maintenance' noises observed with the 10TB Red (which I suspect is based on the He10).

Hopefully the time and money I spent experimenting with these drives spares someone else the same expense and hassle. If you consider an 8TB Red not quiet enough, then I wouldn't recommend any of these 10-12TB models.