Are WD Red 6TB as quiet as 3TB?

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flyingsherpa
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Are WD Red 6TB as quiet as 3TB?

Post by flyingsherpa » Mon Apr 22, 2019 8:22 am

I've seen several people here comment that Reds larger than 6TB are not quiet, but I'm not sure I've seen many comparisons of 3TB and 6TB. Ideally I'd want larger than 6, but I'd rather have the quietness... basically, if the 3 and 6 are basically the same, I'll get a 6. But if the 6 is noticeably louder, I might get a 10 and put it in a simple NAS far away or something.

Abula
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Re: Are WD Red 6TB as quiet as 3TB?

Post by Abula » Mon Apr 22, 2019 9:34 am

I haven't tested WD RED 6TB, i do own a 6TB Purple (similar but different firmware) and its not as quiet as 3tb RED, but its not super noisy either, i cant say for sure but there are time that it has a chirp but i also have a small 1.5 tb WD in there, never really bothered to see which of the two is creating that sound, that usually disappears if i reboot.

I would recommend to go the NAS Route, while today's disk are not super noisy as in the 80s / 90s,but not as quiet as WD Greens (single or dual platter) once were, and part of it is that they are cramping lots of platters on the disk, more than they usually did on air based, so its hard to expect quiet operation. With NAS like Synology that are compact, efficient and very good performing, i don't see a reason to maintain mechanical disk inside your desktop, but its up to you if you feel its worth it.

One practice that a lot are doing, including me, is we are buying WD EasyStore / MyBook / Elements USB hdds and shucking them to be used on our servers, this will bring considerable savings, if you catch a sale, its almost half the cost, and if done correctly you can still assemble back without issues in case you want to reclaim the warranty. In the past it had only WD Red 8tb (helium based), now a days, in all my purchases, i have gotten White Label drives, that according to storage forums, are the same as reds, weather the firmware is the same idk, but they are not 7200rpm drives. The issue for me, is that every day i need more space, so this is the only cost effective way i been able to sustain my servers.

The savings could easily be placed toward a nice synology =P, recommended intel based, the new low power celerons are very capable, check DS218+ or DS1019+.

WD has reacted introducing a 3.3v reset on this drives, that can be avoided doing either of two procedures, taping the 3.3v pin on the hdd, or using a molex power from your PSU and convert it with Molex to Sata, both of them work fine, and to my knowledge synology doesn't have a 3.3V power on their nas, so if this is correct, you dont need to do either of the procedures. I leave you a couple of videos in case you are interested,

How to Remove / Shuck the Hard Drive from Western Digital Easystore 8TB Drive
How to Fix the 3.3V Pin Issue in White Label Disks Shucked from Western Digital 8TB Easystore Drives

flyingsherpa
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Re: Are WD Red 6TB as quiet as 3TB?

Post by flyingsherpa » Tue Apr 23, 2019 8:52 am

I have heard of shucking, but didn't know all those details, thanks. I guess I am leaning towards a NAS eventually, but part of me really likes the simplicity of one PC only... don't have to worry about managing multiple devices. I have been reading about the ODROID HC-2 a bit, it seems darn simple once set up. Hmm, will have to think more, maybe if I wait long enough, large SSDs will get cheap enough and I'll just be able to drop in an 8TB SSD and not worry about new devices ;)

Abula
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Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:22 pm
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Re: Are WD Red 6TB as quiet as 3TB?

Post by Abula » Tue Apr 23, 2019 12:08 pm

flyingsherpa wrote:I have heard of shucking, but didn't know all those details, thanks. I guess I am leaning towards a NAS eventually, but part of me really likes the simplicity of one PC only... don't have to worry about managing multiple devices. I have been reading about the ODROID HC-2 a bit, it seems darn simple once set up.
Research about Synology, in reality their hardware is overpriced imo, but their software and easy of use of the DSM is second to none, i have a friend thats really not that keen of computers, but they still manage fine a synology sever fine, its very easy to setup and no much else, even backups once you set them up the server runs itself fine, you can even setup your own personal cloud, surveillance, mail server, plex, etc, really is a very good all around solution.
flyingsherpa wrote:Hmm, will have to think more, maybe if I wait long enough, large SSDs will get cheap enough and I'll just be able to drop in an 8TB SSD and not worry about new devices ;)
I would give a try to shucking one drive and test it inside your pc, suspended it or enclose it, if its too noisy still then you buy the NAS.

SSD are going down in pricing, we are seeing 4tb drives at $500 mark, i expect them to go down to $350-400 by next year, probably might see an offering on 8tb around $700-800, still is far from the $130 that you can get a shuck 8tb drive today, for ssds to become viable for big storage we still are like 5 years away or more, depending on how hdd manufactures continue to increase their offerings, even on the last trimester on a decline they still sold 77million hdds.

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