WD Red 8TB - extreme vibrations?

[eliland]

Hi all,
I took delivery of my new homemade FreeNAS server a couple months ago, and it has been running stable 24/7 since then. It's loaded with 2x 8TB WD Red drives mirrored and sitting in a Fractal Design R5.

On day one I noticed one of them, possibly both (it's often hard to pinpoint), had a steady ticking noise, even when no data was being written to or read from the server. Sort of like "<10 seconds of nothing> TICK-tick-tick-tick...tick". Fairly loud and annoying and easily felt when holding a finger on the drive, drive cage or even the case itself.

Since then the steady tick has slowly evolved to an extreme vibration. It has completely, and I do mean completely, defeated the Fractal's anti-vibration mount. Everything and anything in or near the case, including the table it sits on, now has a constant hum to it.

Has anyone else noticed this with the WD Red's, especially the 8TB ones? I've had an old 4TB in my desktop PC for ages with zero noise issues. I've run several SMART tests (long, short, scheduled, unscheduled, u name it) on both disks with no problems reported

 

[Jailer]

I would identify that drive and RMA it.

 

[mattbbpl]

Agree with Jailer. I run ten 6TB Reds in a machine and the only audible noise from the thing comes from the (admittedly loud) fans in the chassis.

 

[MrToddsFriends]

I would identify that drive and RMA it.

+1 for RMAing that drive.

No experience with 8TB WD Reds here. Still having an abnormal 2TB WD Red unit sitting on my shelf. More noise and vibrations than usual, but maybe not that bad as the 8TB unit of the TO. No SMART peculiarities seen so far.

Whether an RMA for such reasons is accepted or not I would have no trust in such an abnormal HDD. In my case I identified the abnormal drive after the warranty was void (longer story, was used in a Synology box before). Home user situation, where chances are not bad that a single HDD can be identified by its noise ...