Due to my apartment being small, and for practical reasons, my NAS is located just 3ft/90cm from my head when I sit at my desk. The NAS chassis is a Fractal Design Node 304, and for the past ~6 years I've had 6x 4TB WD Red drives in it (WD40EFRX). It's been working fine, and I haven't heard anything from the NAS when the disks have been idle.
I recently switched to 2x 18TB WD Ultrastar DC HC550 drives. Noise levels were a big concern when choosing disks, and comparing the spec sheets for the 4TB and the 18TB drives, I thought the idle noise levels would be lower. The 4TB drives are 25dBA/28dBA idle/seek, and the 18TB drives are 2.0Bels/3.6Bels idle/seek.
But now, with two 18TB drives, I can constantly hear the hum of the disk drives even when they're idle. OK, apparently 2.0Bels isn't just an alternative way of writing 20dBA but with a lower (marketing-friendly) number, as I naively believed after googling and finding a simple dBA-Bels converter. So even though I now only have two disks, my NAS is louder.
The 18TB drives are also doing some work every ~5 seconds, which means that in addition to the humming, I'm also hearing them seeking or whatever all the time.
So, my question is: are there any quieter large drives out there, suitable for NAS use, that you guys can recommend? By large, I mean 18TB or possibly 16TB.
I recently switched to 2x 18TB WD Ultrastar DC HC550 drives. Noise levels were a big concern when choosing disks, and comparing the spec sheets for the 4TB and the 18TB drives, I thought the idle noise levels would be lower. The 4TB drives are 25dBA/28dBA idle/seek, and the 18TB drives are 2.0Bels/3.6Bels idle/seek.
But now, with two 18TB drives, I can constantly hear the hum of the disk drives even when they're idle. OK, apparently 2.0Bels isn't just an alternative way of writing 20dBA but with a lower (marketing-friendly) number, as I naively believed after googling and finding a simple dBA-Bels converter. So even though I now only have two disks, my NAS is louder.
The 18TB drives are also doing some work every ~5 seconds, which means that in addition to the humming, I'm also hearing them seeking or whatever all the time.
So, my question is: are there any quieter large drives out there, suitable for NAS use, that you guys can recommend? By large, I mean 18TB or possibly 16TB.