Quiet Hard Drives

[ssespa9]

I'm building a NAS that will have to stay in my bedroom and I need it to be as quiet as possible, whilst using HDDs because I want at least 8TB available. I am torn between Ironwolf and WD Red Plus, with both having a 4TB option at 110€, of which I'm buying 3 and using RAIDZ1. Is this a good option noise-wise? I currently have a laptop with a few random drives, and though it does generate a bit of noise, I've grown completely accustomed to it. Will I be fine with any of these, or should I think of something else?

[OhioYJ]

My gaming machine to the right of me has two WD Gold drives in it, I can hear those. My NAS to the left of me has 16 WD Red Plus drives, I don't hear those.

[ssespa9]

1 hour ago, OhioYJ said:

My gaming machine to the right of me has two WD Gold drives in it, I can hear those. My NAS to the left of me has 16 WD Red Plus drives, I don't hear those.

Great, that actually helps a lot. I think I'm gonna go with Red Pluses then.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 hours ago, OhioYJ said:

My gaming machine to the right of me has two WD Gold drives in it, I can hear those. My NAS to the left of me has 16 WD Red Plus drives, I don't hear those.

Which size? There are differences in how they are made according to size, within the same lineup.

 

2 hours ago, ssespa9 said:

Will I be fine with any of these, or should I think of something else?

Probably. In general, helium-filled is quieter than air-filled, and low rpm is quieter than high rpm. I've had 4TB Iron Wolf and 12TB Red Plus drives at separate times. Both were irrelevant when idling, the 12TB Red are noisier when busy (there are also more of them, though), neither to a point where I would mind in any case. I don't sleep in the same room, though. For comparison, I don't have a particularly low-powered CPU, so whenever there is high activity on the drives it is actually the CPU cooler's fans that make me notice, not the HDDs themselves (2x120mm Arctic Bionix, for reference).

TL;DR: I wouldn't expect it to be much of a problem, especially if you don't schedule any particular load for the night.

 

(Notice in my case that the 4TB Iron Wolves are 5900 rpm, while the 12TB Red Pluses are 7200 rpm but helium filled. That's one reason I preferred them over the 8TB version -7200rpm, air-filled- although I don't have any such drive to tell you whether the difference actually matters).

[SteveHeist]

The other, expensive option is an SSD. Samsung 870 QVOs go to 8 terabytes, in SATA form, or there's a variety of NVMe drives around the same size. $600 a drive is very expensive though so hard drives are probably better.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089C3TZL9?th=1

[OhioYJ]

6 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Which size? There are differences in how they are made according to size, within the same lineup.

Fair question, but in this case, my NAS was at one point filled with 16 4 TB drives that the OP was looking at. It's now filled with 16 8 TB WD Red Plus drives.  The Gold drives are currently 24 and 26 TB models.

[ssespa9]

6 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Which size? There are differences in how they are made according to size, within the same lineup.

 

Probably. In general, helium-filled is quieter than air-filled, and low rpm is quieter than high rpm. I've had 4TB Iron Wolf and 12TB Red Plus drives at separate times. Both were irrelevant when idling, the 12TB Red are noisier when busy (there are also more of them, though), neither to a point where I would mind in any case. I don't sleep in the same room, though. For comparison, I don't have a particularly low-powered CPU, so whenever there is high activity on the drives it is actually the CPU cooler's fans that make me notice, not the HDDs themselves (2x120mm Arctic Bionix, for reference).

TL;DR: I wouldn't expect it to be much of a problem, especially if you don't schedule any particular load for the night.

 

(Notice in my case that the 4TB Iron Wolves are 5900 rpm, while the 12TB Red Pluses are 7200 rpm but helium filled. That's one reason I preferred them over the 8TB version -7200rpm, air-filled- although I don't have any such drive to tell you whether the difference actually matters).

Thanks for the info. That helps a lot, I think I might be overthinking this whole noise thing but all in all I'm going to just have to try and see if the ones I want work

[ssespa9]

5 hours ago, SteveHeist said:

The other, expensive option is an SSD. Samsung 870 QVOs go to 8 terabytes, in SATA form, or there's a variety of NVMe drives around the same size. $600 a drive is very expensive though so hard drives are probably better.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089C3TZL9?th=1

Yeah, I've thought of that too, but for the size I want they really are too over budget.

[Timme]

On 4/14/2025 at 2:53 AM, ssespa9 said:

I'm building a NAS that will have to stay in my bedroom and I need it to be as quiet as possible, whilst using HDDs because I want at least 8TB available. I am torn between Ironwolf and WD Red Plus, with both having a 4TB option at 110€, of which I'm buying 3 and using RAIDZ1. Is this a good option noise-wise? I currently have a laptop with a few random drives, and though it does generate a bit of noise, I've grown completely accustomed to it. Will I be fine with any of these, or should I think of something else?

Noise is how the how the Hard Drives drive. Many drives make many noise.

Your two options are sound isolation or slower 5400RPM drives.