Quiet external hard drive, 14-16tb

[JES]

Greetings, I’m wondering about quiet HDD options for a large backup drive.I know I can get a fanless OWC enclosure, but I’d prefer a drive that doesn’t make a lot of mechanical noise. They all seem to have a lot of negative reviews, but maybe that’s just a reflection of the general drive failure rate? SSD in this size seems prohibitive. TIA.

 

[TheRiddler1982]

I was asking that question myself a couple of weeks ago as I was planning to upgrade my external storage device. As I require 6 disks the noise is even more an issue as it sums up. However, I was only looking at the 12TB max size. I read a lot of reviews and the most important thing is that you get a HDD with Helium (this should be the case with all 12TB+) devices.

Have a look at:

https://nascompares.com/2021/05/28/hard-drive-noise-seagate-vs-wd-vs-synology-and-toshiba/

I ended up with Seagate IronWolf 12 TB (not PRO, as they are much louder) and I am quite happy with them.

 

[JES]

Thank you so much both for the site and the specific recommendation. The Ironwolf looks good. EDIT: actually, I'm not sure. NAS drives are meant to be constantly running. If I'm using it for a Time Machine backup, am I going to run into more clicking, etc?

 

[TheRiddler1982]

Thank you so much both for the site and the specific recommendation. The Ironwolf looks good. EDIT: actually, I'm not sure. NAS drives are meant to be constantly running. If I'm using it for a Time Machine backup, am I going to run into more clicking, etc?

I am not an expert to give you good advice on that one. NAS drives are made for 24/7 but I cannot tell you if such devices have any downsites on putting them off and on on a regular basis. Clicking only occures on disk access, in general. We have different use cases. As I do a lot of RAW photo editing I have higher demands on I/O and silent run as they are constantly on my left side. However, for backup, you do not need any high performance drives. So, then go with the WD Red NAS (see link above).

Another nice comparison:

Vergleich: Die beste Festplatte fürs NAS von 4 bis 12 TByte

Wir vergleichen NAS-Festplatten von Western Digital, Seagate und Toshiba. Im Benchmark zeigen sich dabei teilweise erstaunliche Ergebnisse.

www.techstage.de

It's in German. Use your browser's translation feature to get in your native language.

 

[xraydoc]

Greetings, I’m wondering about quiet HDD options for a large backup drive.I know I can get a fanless OWC enclosure, but I’d prefer a drive that doesn’t make a lot of mechanical noise. They all seem to have a lot of negative reviews, but maybe that’s just a reflection of the general drive failure rate? SSD in this size seems prohibitive. TIA.

If it's going to be used mostly for backups, get yourself a NAS and put it in another room. Bingo. No noise.