Why do people complain about HDD "noise"?

General Discussion
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There’s a common complaint that comes up on these forums, the old forums, and elsewhere on the internet that involves NAS and data hoarding discussions: HDD noise

Who does this apply to? As I am typing this, my main TrueNAS server is only a few feet from where I sit. It’s a standard ATX tower with several fans, and currently houses 3 Exos (7200RPM). I previously downgraded from 6 HDDs to simplify my main storage, but even then I did not consider my server “loud” or “intrusive”.

When I had 6 HDDs, and now with 3 Exos, I barely hear anything HDD-related, except for when the “arms” are seeking, reading, and writing data. Other than that, the constant spinning of the drives is nothing more than pleasant “white noise”.

I honestly hear my case fans more than the HDDs themselves. None of this really matters to me, since spinning fans and drives are a soothing “white noise”, in my opinion. I could sleep with this “noise” in the background.

Is the HDD noise concern mainly for those who have rackmount servers with more than a dozen drives? Do your rooms sound like jet engines because of the HDDs spinning?

EDIT: The reason I bring up “RPMs” and “spinning” is because criticisms you will read about certain speeds and models (such as Exos) is that they are “loud”.

If it is only the sounds of the arms (reading/writing) that are the problem, then I don’t see how “loud drives” are unique to high-rotational speed drives. Even “slow” HDDs make clicking sounds under heavy I/O.

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In my experience, i agree with your pow.
I can hear my 6 disks only when they spin up powering on the server, or when i access/write data… But still theyr noise is always covered by something else and Is never the “main noise source”.
I pratically have my Nas sit in my work desk, so i pass a lot of time with him ahahah
With a basic phone app i misured ~15db from all the system in idle (so including 3 fans, CPU cooler and PSU); i can say that what make more noise Is the CPU fan cooler when CPU Is in high usage (i miss my passive alpine cooler, but he couldn’t handle the xeon despite i choose an L version), and the buzz of the UPS… The fans run at ~1000rpm and are pratically unidible, same for the PSU fan.

Tldr for me too hard disk noice Is not a concern ATM

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Some people have drives that are seeking, reading, and writing data, during all hours of the day. If you sleep in the same room as your server running the Arr-stack, it’s not going to be quiet.

Some drives are really noisy, comparatively.
For example, my HGST’s make plenty of rather annoying noise when in use, whereas my Toshibas aren’t nearly as disruptive when they churn away, they’re almost soothing. The HGST’s also had a setting enabled where they would automatically do a background medium scan when not in use. I quickly turned that off.

Guess which system I turn off whenever I don’t need it and which one is running 24/7…

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