[Kunzite]

7200RPM drives are louder than 5400RPM drives, but both are quieter than the 15,000RPM speed demons that Seagate (amazingly) still makes. The advantage of high spindle speeds is an increase in data seek and read times and more consistent data rates in file operations.

Sorry, but being quieter than an air raid siren is of small consolation

I wish they used a coherent decibel rating instead of some esoteric unit of measurement that could be compared between brands. The difference in acoustic noise between WD and Seagate drives is roughly 3 db*. In a nutshell: 3 decibels is a trivial difference, frequency response of human hearing is nowhere near linear (audiophiles with golden ears will dispute this) and there are a number of studies I can cite where 6~3dB is the commonly accepted range of any detectable difference by the individuals involved in the studies**.

Nice, but this is purely theoretical - and I'd like to know how it is in real life. Spin-up sound? Isn't even measured. Pitch? Annoying clicks? Vibrations? Heat? (last is not sound, of course, but it's still relevant).

From what I have heard this is because their RAID controller synchronizes all the volumes in the entire array at once: I suppose this ensures data integrity, at the cost of noise levels and power efficiency.

It seems they're having some system data on all the disks, so the NAS would still somewhat work even if the system volume becomes inaccessible.
My problem is that they're waking up RAID groups which have nothing to do with the data being accessed. Have the system volume on SSDs, the HDDs would still spin up unnecessarily (from the user's point of view).

7WD intellipower gets overridden so with QNAP you are better off using Seagate drives (they seem to have a sort of partnership with QNAP) as Seagate drives have integrated hard drive health monitor that works really well with QNAP NAS systems. When I was going though in depth reviews on QNAP NAS hardware I have been impressed: I could not build a server with the energy efficiency of a QNAP NAS. Even with all the bays populated and the processor pinned to 100% utilization some of them run on less power than an 80w incandescent lightbulb.

Yeah, Seagate's health monitoring would be nice.
I thought a bit about a DYI NAS - after all, I've built a few PCs so it's not like I can't do it. I couldn't find a suitable solution - either as cost, or as size, or as power consumption. Sure, it's relatively easy to do once you relax your requirements; but e.g. I don't want another tower sitting on my desk.

[mlag]

Note when considering disc specs like noise and standby power consumption , buffer memory size etc. these can considerably change within even the same series of one brand. Typically there is a turning point around 6-8 TB, in some cases there exist 2 variants of for instance the 6 TB.... a lower spec and higher spec variant. Downloading the series spec sheets of the supplier is the only way to find out.... and when ordering checking the variants supplied!

This makes comparing different sized disks even from one series tricky...

[Weevil]

Note when considering disc specs like noise and standby power consumption , buffer memory size etc. these can considerably change within even the same series of one brand. Typically there is a turning point around 6-8 TB, in some cases there exist 2 variants of for instance the 6 TB.... a lower spec and higher spec variant. Downloading the series spec sheets of the supplier is the only way to find out.... and when ordering checking the variants supplied!

This makes comparing different sized disks even from one series tricky...

interesting info... good to know ! thanks

[Kunzite]

Downloading the series spec sheets of the supplier is the only way to find out.... and when ordering checking the variants supplied!

One can easily notice the helium-filled drives this way (they're less noisy)

Or rule out some noisier drive (say, the 10TB WD Red Plus are quite a bit noisier than the 8TB ones, both EFAX and EFBX).
It still doesn't say how it sounds, unfortunately.

[Grokh]

I have four WD Red 10 TB drives. The NAS stands three meters away from me and even late at night in a completely quiet room it is almost inaudible when writing files to a disk.

[Kunzite]

I have four WD Red 10 TB drives.

The older WD Reds? Now the larger capacity drives are the 7200rpm Red Plus or Red Pro.

I was talking about the Red Plus, which according to the datasheet has 34/38 dBA at idle/seek, compared with e.g. the 27/29 dBA of the 8TB Red Plus.

[Grokh]

The older WD Reds? Now the larger capacity drives are the 7200rpm Red Plus or Red Pro.

I was talking about the Red Plus, which according to the datasheet has 34/38 dBA at idle/seek, compared with e.g. the 27/29 dBA of the 8TB Red Plus.

No, modern ones. Red Plus WD101EFBX, 34/38 dBA. Very quiet in practice. Can be placed in the bedroom.

[Kunzite]

No, modern ones. Red Plus WD101EFBX, 34/38 dBA. Very quiet in practice. Can be placed in the bedroom.

That's encouraging.

But now I've seen very good prices on 14TB Ultrastars... datacenter drives, barely more expensive than an 8TB Red Plus. WD and Seagate should have "audition rooms" in which you could listen to their drives!

[Urnamaster13]

What is strategy for offsite backup storage for those who are using it ?
Is there any cost-effective and hassle free way to do so ?

[mlag]

I use a 2nd NAS in a nearby, but sufficient remote detached building, over slow power ethernet but sufficient fast. Can offer protection for theft or fire in main building...., but less if lightning strikes on the local electricity grid. Weekly backups - only adding files, no deleting if source is deleted- from the main NAS. The backup NAS is a slightly cheaper edition, no ssd caching, large but cheaper , bit slower disks. On the backup NAS there is a second, monthly incremental internal copy : if some files are overwritten, I can go back several monhs...

The NAS can also supports certain brands cloud drives (both as source or destination) but there is some volality and dependency in the support from both the NAS and cloud providers - things change over time -few years sometimes , changes in protocol or tariff or even loss of data of some cloud providers ...- and my setup runs for more than a decade...

[MarkJerling]

What is strategy for offsite backup storage for those who are using it ?
Is there any cost-effective and hassle free way to do so ?

Onedrive works for me.

[Kunzite]

Got a new 14TB Red Plus drive, just because it had a good price, I needed to replace the PC's HDD and I contemplated going 4x8-12TB anyway (thus, wanted to see if it's as quiet as the datasheet suggests).
It makes an annoying click, every 5 seconds or so. Apparently it's designed to do it, something about lubrication... (all SMART indicators and tests are green, by the way)
Seagate is said to do so as well (while being noisier). Hmm...

[Urnamaster13]

the incremental update is interesting, are you able to check/view the files and choose which month/date do you want to backup from ?

i was considering using backblaze for this reason...., right now NAS is not feasible as i might be relocating next year

[mlag]

the incremental update is interesting, are you able to check/view the files and choose which month/date do you want to backup from ?

Yes, each time instance appears as separate folder, so you can step back in time and see which version you want for the restore.
You can set time limit (only keeping last x months or weeks) or space limit (keep as many versions as possible, but never consume more than xx% of diskspace). If it hits the limit, oldest copy is erased.


Note that there are two interpretation or settings of incremental possible:

1. Only transmit changed files or new files to backup (=increment). Only one copy is kept (the last version)
2. Same as 1. But keep each previous version as separate backup instance. This allows you to backtrack in time, but requires more memory for all the "versions". Luckily each version contains only the changed files and is usually only a small percentage of your storage, so if you reserve 25% of disk space for incremental backup, you can keep 25x 1% increments...