wd purple pro noisy drive seek

alwaysoff · Oct 20, 2021

I use a 10tb wd purple pro for my blue iris machine on a dell optiplex 7040. It's located in a room adjacent to my bedroom, and at night I find its noise to be a bit annoying. Constantly grinding grr grr grrr. Note that I know what a faulty hdd noise sounds like, and this is not a fault noise. The drive is working fine. It's just the sound of the head moving around I think. I guess there's not much I can do about it other than using a different type of drive, eg a 5400rpm wd red. Has anyone experienced a similar issue? Has anyone tried using a WD Red?

I might try putting the dell computer on a thick rubber mouse pad or something to absorb its vibration.

tigerwillow1 · Oct 20, 2021

I've got a 10 TB non-purple WD drive model WD100EZAZ. Haven't gotten around to installing it yet but while bench testing, I noted that it constantly makes head movement noises. I've not figured out or heard what the reason is.

mat200 · Oct 20, 2021

alwaysoff said:
I use a 10tb wd purple pro for my blue iris machine on a dell optiplex 7040. It's located in a room adjacent to my bedroom, and at night I find its noise to be a bit annoying. Constantly grinding grr grr grrr. Note that I know what a faulty hdd noise sounds like, and this is not a fault noise. The drive is working fine. It's just the sound of the head moving around I think. I guess there's not much I can do about it other than using a different type of drive, eg a 5400rpm wd red. Has anyone experienced a similar issue? Has anyone tried using a WD Red?

I might try putting the dell computer on a thick rubber mouse pad or something to absorb its vibration.

fyi -

check the smart errors on the hdd just in case ..

look for ways to reduce noise coming from the PC to your bedroom ..

concord · Oct 20, 2021

I've read that WD has found a way of not using helium in larger drives now and they make more noise. I have a 10TB Red CMR drive that I bought last year for my Plex server and it is very noisy too.

Rob2020 · Oct 20, 2021

Never noticed my 4 TB Purple causing any issues with noise.

A 5400 Red Plus would likely be quieter.

It's located in a room adjacent to my bedroom;

Maybe put it in an enclosure that muffles the sound but still allows the heat to dissipate.

Red + Noise Test

SpacemanSpiff · Oct 20, 2021

mat200 said:
check the smart errors on the hdd just in case ..

^^^ This.

I am not refuting OP's comfort level with tech, to assert it is not faulty. BUT..... The Western Digital Dashboard utility is free, and the investment of your time to let it loose on the drive is cheap. While the progress bar moves slowly to the right, you can star designing your acoustic mods to the machine

Old Timer · Oct 20, 2021

I had a WD drive I shucked out of a USB drive enclosure that was noisy.
I ended up using some rubber mounts to isoulate it from the chassis, the tin case was amplifying the sound.

Flintstone61 · Oct 20, 2021

is the WD100EZAZ considered a white label drive shucked from a My Book? or what color category does it fit? Red? Blue?
( oh nevermind)

sebastiantombs · Oct 20, 2021

Chartreuse

Flintstone61 · Oct 20, 2021

What WD and HGST hard drives are SMR?

A guide to WD and HGST hard drives with CMR and SMR technology.

hddscan.com

Flintstone61 · Oct 20, 2021

Maybe if the hours are low, you can sell the PRO drive, for a non Pro version with a diff spin rate? If you use speccy or other utilities, they will tell you how many on power on cycles, how many in use hours.
Some guy on ebay had that data on my 8TB WD Purple, something like 20 power on cycles, and 100 something hours of Power on time. So it had a lot of life left in it. I think it was 40-50 bucks cheaper than a Brand New one.

alwaysoff · Oct 20, 2021

Interesting point about getting a non-pro drive.

Quoting from an article:

The all-SATA Purple HDD range is divided into low-end 1TB to 6TB drives which spin at 5400 – 5700rpm, support 64 cameras and have a 180TB/year workload rating. The 8TB – 18TB Purple drives spin faster at 7,200rpm, support 64 cameras plus 32 video streams for deep learning analytics. They have a higher 360TB/year workload rating.

The Purple Pros have the same 8TB – 18TB capacity and 7,200rpm spin speed as the upper-end Purple HDDS but a higher still 550TB/year workload rating. They also have a 5-year warranty compared to the Purple drives’ 3-year warranty. The 8TB and 10TB products are air-filled drives while the 12TB, 14TB and 18TB products have sealed, helium-filled enclosures. These helium-filled drives have a 2.5 million hours MTBF rating while the air-filled drives have a 2 million hours MTBF number.

Purple Pros have a WD Device Analytics (WDDA) feature that provides device parametric operational and diagnostic data. Algorithms interpret the data and direct the host system to alert admin staff with specific recommendations to address potential issues. The idea is that WD OEMs, system integrators, and IT pros can better monitor and manage supported storage devices using the drives.

To get 5400rpm I'd need to get a 6TB non pro drive.

Interesting to read about >= 12TB being helium filled. Are they quieter than air-filled ones?

Flintstone61 · Oct 20, 2021

oh . I see, once you get past 8TB they go 7200? looks like that. I have 8TB purp. its quiet, unless it's the only thing running in the room. I tried a recommended format Cluster size larger than the default, and heard seeking and head movement. then I reformatted to a 128Kb cluster size and the seeking sound/ head movement stopped.

Flintstone61 · Oct 20, 2021

here is a WD84PURZ part number that i have. its an 8TB 5640 rpm deal.

concord · Oct 20, 2021

alwaysoff said:
Interesting to read about >= 12TB being helium filled. Are they quieter than air-filled ones?

I found them to be quieter, along with drawing less power (thus less heat). On my work RAID servers, I added Hitachi (HGST) 8TB Enterprise (helium) drives several years ago. At that time, anything 8TB and over used helium in HGST drives. Helium lets them create larger capacity drives and I believe WD ~~is working on~~ released a 20TB drive. WD bought out HGST a few years ago.

See history about WD quietly changing RED drives from CMR to SMR in below link, which was a concern for people using them in RAID, as the rebuild time increased dramatically.

WD Addresses SMR Controversy With New Red Plus Hard Drives

In response to withering criticism, WD has announced a new line to faster CMR hard drives to complement its slower SMR models.

www.tomshardware.com

Western Digital introduces new non-SMR 20TB HDDs with onboard NAND

These aren't "hybrids"—their NAND components aren't used for user data.

arstechnica.com

Flintstone61 · Oct 20, 2021

As an aside….I’ve yet to see a Surveillance drive in a department store recorder.
Of the 3 I opened up, 1 had a WD Green 500Gb, 1 had a Toshiba 1TB, and the other was a 2 TB Hitachi Deskstar. ( not to be confused with Deathstar)

TVille · Oct 20, 2021

I have a 10 year old machine at a remote location running a stock 1 TB hard drive, with Bi and 6 cameras. Been working that way just fine. I have been expecting to lose the HD for years. It will probably fail next week.

I'll probably have to install Windows 10 on it when that happens, it is running Windows 8.1 just fine!

I got a "new (eBay) computer a couple of months ago. Re-installed Win 10 Pro on it from scratch, and the HDs (one purple, one not) were rattling all night long. it is in my office where it doesn't bother me. Turns out that I had not turned disk optimization off. Turned it off, and silence.

alwaysoff · Oct 20, 2021

TVille said:
Turns out that I had not turned disk optimization off. Turned it off, and silence.

How/where did you turn it off? I noticed the WD Dashboard can turn off "Windows write caching". Is this the setting you're referring to?

Flintstone61 · Oct 20, 2021

in Windows. like Defrag.

TVille · Oct 20, 2021

alwaysoff said:
How/where did you turn it off? I noticed the WD Dashboard can turn off "Windows write caching". Is this the setting you're referring to?

Somewhere in Windows settings. Don't remember, I googled it.

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