Seagate EXOS X16 16Tb - mad to have it in a machine next to your desk?

[KuniD]

So I've been operating 6 x Seagate Archive 8Tb drives for the last 6 or so years. For the most part they're still ticking along although the first has just failed (awful whirring sound), so I'm looking to replace the drive.

 

I'm thinking now is a sensible time to start slowly transitioning the setup to larger volume drives, so will be starting with a parity swap out. 

 

While I was initially focused on the Seagate Ironwolf Pro and Western Digital Red Pro lineups, I noticed the Seagate EXOS X16 16Tb is on Amazon for a rather surreal £262;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-ST16000NM001G-EXOS-X16-Internal/dp/B07SPFPKF4/

 

Considering most the Ironwolf Pro and Red Pro 16Tb drives are £400-500 this seems like quite a bargain.

 

My Unraid box (in a Fractal Design R5 case) is on the floor next to my desk. I have lived with the whir of the 6x Seagate Archive 8Tb drives without complaint, but am worried that these enterprise/data centre drives may be a lot louder.

 

I can see a lot of comments only saying their very loud, on the other hand I came across this article (see bottom of page) which seems to suggest in a comparison that they're not too bad;

https://www.nikktech.com/main/articles/pc-hardware/storage/hard-disk-drives/10110-seagate-exos-x16-16tb-sata-iii-hdd-review?start=7

 

Does anyone have any experience of these drives in close proximity regular use?

 

Only other thing putting me off the Amazon link is that it mentions its an OEM drive / US sourced and the reviews seem to indicate Seagate won't honour the warranty. I suppose its a trade off on that much storage per £ vs much higher with a warranty.

[GreenDolphin]

I'm about to set up my first Unraid server.
I have an 8TB Seagate IronWolf I bought a while back and never used, but in the meantime my data has grown such that I need to buy another drive anyway simply to be able to get data onto the array to begin with. I was going to buy another 8TB Ironwolf, but to my surprise, these Exos 16TB drives offer by far the best $/TB of any other HD I've seen.
Basic Googling doesn't yield any obvious catch (obviously, if it fails mechanically, that's a lot of data, so backups are vital, and parity checks, rebuilds, preclear etc. take a long time). I'd be using the Exos as the parity drive in the new server, which will live right next to my desk as well.

@KuniD, did you end up buying the drive? How happy are you with it? Reliability or performance issues? Noise wise?