Thanks for this. Your vids always seem to be exactly what I'm looking for whenever I doubt I'm gonna find a video of the test I want to see, haha. Genuinely helpful, in-depth info.
Would like to know this, too. Thinking about getting a 8TB Red Plus, but only if accustics don't change significantly compared to the super quiet 4TB drives (though, as it's 7200 RPM, it probably does).
exactly. Nice video, but too much talking, too much interrupting and too little data. Should have just showed the listening as example, but actually tested all size drives across the board. I had 2 toshiba n300s 14tb and sent them both back because they were extremely loud and annoying.
Your test is not correct. You calibrated your "sound meter" down to 6-10 dB which is impossible in a normal environment. You will be hard pressed to find an environment thats under 20 dB. You talking shows ~30-40 dB which is not correct, its more like 45-60 dB. Its not exactly wrong, one can add ~+20 dB to your results and get a real picture of how much SPL is there since the ratio is still correct. In any case, do not equate "silence" to your ears to 0 dB, it is not. We cant really hear under 10 dB so if you have "dead silence" in a room you are probably in the range of 10-20 dB SPL depending on the frequency. Im an environmental protection engineer and i specialize in noise measurements.
Thanks for doing these tests and making this video, but. It may have been more useful if you did the tests and then recorded your audio separately afterwards. Also taking that 25db off the meter means that we have to mentally try to add 25 onto a moving meter to work out how loud things actually are. Most people, will be mentally thinking about 30-40-50db, but see 12 and have to add 25 in their head to see how loud it is. We never actually heard the sound of the drive. If you hadn’t done your audio at the same time, you could have boosted the mic on the drive so we can hear what kinds of sounds it was making (whine, hum, clicks etc). The type of sound matters, not just the levels. Some people say the WD make a more high pitched sound compared to Seagate for example. Some say WD sound is more annoying, but also easier to dampen down in a case.
I am not really sure how calibration of any amount is going to make any difference. The drive noise will still be relative to the background level, which in your room very likely was 20dB on that meter. The calibration would have just calibrated ALL the readings down by the same amount...... Also, noise inside an enclosure, including any resonance, is important. With that said, I have found the WD Red Plus drives to be fairly quiet when compared to the Pro drives when used in real world installs in Synology NAS devices. The spin-up generally is quite reasonable, but the noise from the steppers driving the heads is quite loud on Pro level drives I have used when compared to the Plus.
I bought a 14 tb red plus and there's a high pitch noise that runs all the time while the drive is on. It's quiet in terms of clicking and other typical HDD noises but the high pitch noise is driving me insane
First: extremely useful video, thanks! My application is 2 drives in a file server in my living room, so noise is important, especially when idle. What I notice with this WD Red Plus vs. the IronWolf 14TB is a low frequency bass note. My suspicion is that will reverberate around my case and cause vibrations. The Seagate might win for me, I think.
My WD80EFAX is so quite I barely hear it's working. Can you tell if WD120EFBX is the same actually? Because the noise levels are somewhat identical on paper. The rotational speed is the same for both drives, though WD80EFAX stated as 5400 class it's actually 7200 RPM drive, I guess....
One question, I just installed one hard drive, when in the future, i put the second disk, it will delete all my data from the first disk or copy all to the second one? Thanks for your videos
I think that if you want to make a RAID, it will delete the data. If you want the second disk as just a separate disk, then you just format it with whatever filesystem you want and start using it.
Look up the product data sheet. Even within WD and Seagate, their own 4TB drives can be made differently from one another, i.e. some WD 4TBs are faster/louder than others, offer more/less cache, or use SMR/CMR. It depends on the exact model number of the drive. But if in your scenario, the drives are _specifically_ *WD40EFZX* and *ST4000VN008,* then according to the *claimed* decibel ratings given in the company data sheets: - the WD drive is rated at 23 dB at idle; 27 dB average - the ST drive is rated at 23 dB at idle; 25 dB typical
The clicking sounds are absolutely terrible on these drives even though I have the low RPM variant, and I'm thinking of returning them. I have 4TB barracudas in my other PC that I can hardly even hear, but they are SMR drives and I wanted an upgrade.
Does anyone know if the new WD Red Plus (EFZX) are different in audio than the older 64MB Cache SMR versions(WD Red EFRX)? I have 3x EFRX in my desktop (price is similar to Blues, so why would I bother with those?), each 4TB and audio performance is fantastic! Eventually I will add 1 or 2 additional ones and am wondering if I should seek out further EFRXs or go up to EFZX (WD Red Plus)? Don't care much about slight performance difference, just don't want to hear my HDDs.
@@dani25801 yes, they are pretty quiet. I added 2x 4TB EFZX to my non plus EFRX ones. I can tell that the newer models vibrate quite a bit more to the touch, but luckily it gets dampened out by silicone in my hard drive bays. Purely on that they are a small step down from the fabulous predecessor.
@@dani25801Are your older ones the 64MB cache variant like mine, or the 256MB ones? In my case I'm referring to idle operation (spinning, but not seaking or writing). Haven't really compared them under load. Got 3 old ones and 2 plus drives in my system (4tb each). Consistently, the old ones have close to no vibration when spinning, while the plus drives vibrate much more noticably. Also have a 4TB WD Black, that one is considerably noisier than any of the reds (by a lot, however, I'm running it suspended on rubber bands in a 5.25" bay, which cancels out any noise - this works spectacularly, unfortunately large drive bays are going more and more extinct in modern PC cases).
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For a 16 minute video, I would have expected to learn the noise of all 9 models in the Red Plus lineup.
Thanks for this. Your vids always seem to be exactly what I'm looking for whenever I doubt I'm gonna find a video of the test I want to see, haha. Genuinely helpful, in-depth info.
I'd be more interested in Red Plus 8TB noise than the 4TB.
Would like to know this, too. Thinking about getting a 8TB Red Plus, but only if accustics don't change significantly compared to the super quiet 4TB drives (though, as it's 7200 RPM, it probably does).
That's exactly what I was looking for. 😑
exactly. Nice video, but too much talking, too much interrupting and too little data. Should have just showed the listening as example, but actually tested all size drives across the board. I had 2 toshiba n300s 14tb and sent them both back because they were extremely loud and annoying.
Your test is not correct. You calibrated your "sound meter" down to 6-10 dB which is impossible in a normal environment. You will be hard pressed to find an environment thats under 20 dB. You talking shows ~30-40 dB which is not correct, its more like 45-60 dB. Its not exactly wrong, one can add ~+20 dB to your results and get a real picture of how much SPL is there since the ratio is still correct. In any case, do not equate "silence" to your ears to 0 dB, it is not. We cant really hear under 10 dB so if you have "dead silence" in a room you are probably in the range of 10-20 dB SPL depending on the frequency.
Im an environmental protection engineer and i specialize in noise measurements.
Thanks for doing these tests and making this video, but. It may have been more useful if you did the tests and then recorded your audio separately afterwards. Also taking that 25db off the meter means that we have to mentally try to add 25 onto a moving meter to work out how loud things actually are. Most people, will be mentally thinking about 30-40-50db, but see 12 and have to add 25 in their head to see how loud it is. We never actually heard the sound of the drive. If you hadn’t done your audio at the same time, you could have boosted the mic on the drive so we can hear what kinds of sounds it was making (whine, hum, clicks etc). The type of sound matters, not just the levels. Some people say the WD make a more high pitched sound compared to Seagate for example. Some say WD sound is more annoying, but also easier to dampen down in a case.
I am not really sure how calibration of any amount is going to make any difference. The drive noise will still be relative to the background level, which in your room very likely was 20dB on that meter. The calibration would have just calibrated ALL the readings down by the same amount...... Also, noise inside an enclosure, including any resonance, is important.
With that said, I have found the WD Red Plus drives to be fairly quiet when compared to the Pro drives when used in real world installs in Synology NAS devices. The spin-up generally is quite reasonable, but the noise from the steppers driving the heads is quite loud on Pro level drives I have used when compared to the Plus.
I bought a 14 tb red plus and there's a high pitch noise that runs all the time while the drive is on. It's quiet in terms of clicking and other typical HDD noises but the high pitch noise is driving me insane
😯
First: extremely useful video, thanks! My application is 2 drives in a file server in my living room, so noise is important, especially when idle. What I notice with this WD Red Plus vs. the IronWolf 14TB is a low frequency bass note. My suspicion is that will reverberate around my case and cause vibrations. The Seagate might win for me, I think.
My WD80EFAX is so quite I barely hear it's working. Can you tell if WD120EFBX is the same actually? Because the noise levels are somewhat identical on paper. The rotational speed is the same for both drives, though WD80EFAX stated as 5400 class it's actually 7200 RPM drive, I guess....
One question, I just installed one hard drive, when in the future, i put the second disk, it will delete all my data from the first disk or copy all to the second one? Thanks for your videos
I think that if you want to make a RAID, it will delete the data. If you want the second disk as just a separate disk, then you just format it with whatever filesystem you want and start using it.
which is the quietest:
- WD Plus CMR ...4tb (128mb cache)
- Ironwolf 4Tb (64 mb cache)
Thanks
Look up the product data sheet. Even within WD and Seagate, their own 4TB drives can be made differently from one another, i.e. some WD 4TBs are faster/louder than others, offer more/less cache, or use SMR/CMR. It depends on the exact model number of the drive.
But if in your scenario, the drives are _specifically_ *WD40EFZX* and *ST4000VN008,* then according to the *claimed* decibel ratings given in the company data sheets:
- the WD drive is rated at 23 dB at idle; 27 dB average
- the ST drive is rated at 23 dB at idle; 25 dB typical
Mine is clicking when in use.... is it normal?
The clicking sounds are absolutely terrible on these drives even though I have the low RPM variant, and I'm thinking of returning them. I have 4TB barracudas in my other PC that I can hardly even hear, but they are SMR drives and I wanted an upgrade.
Does anyone know if the new WD Red Plus (EFZX) are different in audio than the older 64MB Cache SMR versions(WD Red EFRX)?
I have 3x EFRX in my desktop (price is similar to Blues, so why would I bother with those?), each 4TB and audio performance is fantastic! Eventually I will add 1 or 2 additional ones and am wondering if I should seek out further EFRXs or go up to EFZX (WD Red Plus)? Don't care much about slight performance difference, just don't want to hear my HDDs.
WD Red Plus EFZX is very very quiet,i have one of 4 tb !
@@dani25801 yes, they are pretty quiet. I added 2x 4TB EFZX to my non plus EFRX ones. I can tell that the newer models vibrate quite a bit more to the touch, but luckily it gets dampened out by silicone in my hard drive bays.
Purely on that they are a small step down from the fabulous predecessor.
@@urbantwilight Strange,in my case is the opposite , the newer is less vibrating.Not all drives is exactly the same.
@@dani25801Are your older ones the 64MB cache variant like mine, or the 256MB ones?
In my case I'm referring to idle operation (spinning, but not seaking or writing). Haven't really compared them under load.
Got 3 old ones and 2 plus drives in my system (4tb each). Consistently, the old ones have close to no vibration when spinning, while the plus drives vibrate much more noticably.
Also have a 4TB WD Black, that one is considerably noisier than any of the reds (by a lot, however, I'm running it suspended on rubber bands in a 5.25" bay, which cancels out any noise - this works spectacularly, unfortunately large drive bays are going more and more extinct in modern PC cases).
@@urbantwilight I have efzx 128 mb cache ,5400 rpm,wd red plus. Idle or load , it is not much difference.
Thanks for this
I was expecting to hear less talks (aka more stfu) and more actual hdd noise but well... let's seek another comparision vid ;p