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What are the noise levels for the Seagate Exos 6TB drives? My NAS is standing on the floor besides my desk and I am quite sensitive to computer noise as I am sitting in front of the thing all day.

Please note that I have done quite a bit of research but haven't found anything conclusive so that's why I am trying here. Unfortunately sound levels is not part of the specs.

Josh Barfield
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marlar
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    Their own product description does not suggest a design for silent operations *”Seagate Exos enterprise class drives are perfect high-reliability solutions for servers, storage systems, and business-centric NAS systems.”* - operating noise is usually not a concern for deployment in datacenters If noise is really a concern - get SSD’s instead of spinning rust – Bob Dec 23 '19 at 11:40
  • Why is this question closed? I am NOT asking for product recommendation. I have a specific product in mind and ask for information about this product's noise level. I have spent 2-3 hours searching for info without finding anything specific. And the answer is terrific with great details about the noise level of various disks. I have no idea how Overmind came up with such details. I don't know where I could have found this valuable information other than on Serverfault (or maybe another Stackexchange site). Thus, the question should not have been closed. – marlar Dec 26 '19 at 21:25

1 Answers1

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You assume that EXOS series is more reliable. That may or may not be true.

The noise yes, it is higher significantly than most known drives. The drive will also will require better environment conditions for it to properly run. If you just put it on some desk and start/stop it whenever you feel to do so it will most likely not last longer than a WD Red because you will most likely not be able to provide the proper temperature for it (or for a WD Gold just the same).

See below:

The tested EXOS had the SN04 version of firmware. Due to many complains it is possible that in more recent firmware versions noise to be lower.

The Quietest 1TB drive = Western Digital AV-GP 1TB (Noise level 28.2 dB(Active))

The Quietest 2TB drive = Toshiba E300  (Noise level 28.2 dB(Active))

The Quietest 3TB drive = Western Digital Red (Noise level 28.8 dB(Active))

The Quietest 4TB drive = Western Digital Blue (Noise level 28.8 dB(Active))

The Quietest 5TB drive = Western Digital Green (Noise level 33.5 dB(Active))

The Quietest 6TB drive = HGST Ultrastar He6 (Noise level 23.8 dB(Active))

The Quietest 8TB drive = Western Digital Red (Noise level 22.5 dB(Active))

The Quietest 10TB drive = Western Digital Red (Noise level 21.7 dB(Active))

The Quietest 12TB drive = Western Digital Gold (Noise level 23.3 dB(Active))

Seagate EXOS 6TB idle noise = 45 dB

Seagate EXOS 8TB idle noise = 47 dB

So if you want a quiet 6TB get a HGST or WD Red.

If you can assure a data-center-like operating environment then get a WD Gold.

The choice in drives now-days fits in 3 categories: backup, general use and intense use/reliability.

For reliability, the old WD black / RE is now called WD Gold and it's certainly the 1st choice when it comes to long-lasting drives. These are mostly also the top performance ones.

For general use, anything else should be fine: Barracudas, WD blue, red, Firecudas, Red Pro. In my opinion, the old WD color coding was better than today's options; now it can be confusing as we have stuff like Red and Red Pro (same goes for Barracudas standard and Pro).

For backup, WD Greens used to be the best choice, but now both companies release various types of NAS devices that simplify things while offering a large enough variation in choices.

There's also the special use case of video surveillance and purple drives. Here you can used enterprise class drives like WD gold for Video Surveillance systems but it's strongly NOT recommended to use SkyHawks or WD Purples in data centers. The reason for this is that surveillance drives do not offer the guarantee of data integrity, as other drives do. Therefore, storing a large archive on one has a high chance of compromising your data.

Overmind
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    Great answer, thanks. Where do you have the data from? I have had two crashes with WD Red in my NAS. I have a theory that it is the extremely write-heavy pruning and compacting cycles of Crashplan that kill the drives. Another reason for not going for WD Red is that they seem make only efax drives these days. Which are not happy with too much writing. – marlar Dec 25 '19 at 20:23
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    I have thousands of drives that I use in various environments and statistics starting with 80GB-drives times. There's quite a long story behind my current choices in drives. To summarize, WD will win on reliability since Windows 95 era. Seagate improved a lot also on reliability in the last few years, which I admire them for. [Will add the next-part to the answer]. – Overmind Dec 27 '19 at 07:08
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    Clarification: With efax in my comment above I mean that the current models of WD Red drives are called something with efax, like WD80EFAX , and these models are SMR types of drives. But I managed to find some PMR type drives which typically are named WD**EFRX. – marlar Dec 27 '19 at 21:14
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    PMR WD drives can have an R, like XXRX, but it's not a general rule. – Overmind Dec 30 '19 at 12:49