December 1, 20241 yr Good Afternoon, Sorry if this is a repeat, but I used the search function for "HDD" and "noise" both having to be included in "everywhere" and did not find a matching thread. I went back to the start of 2023 in the search results. I did some searches outside the forum, but beyond close up videos of open cases recording HDD noises it wasn't very successful either, with comments claiming them to be almost silent or very loud. The situation I want to avoid is being woken up, or being kept awake, by someone accessing the server remotely (spinning up + reading operations), when everything is silent at night. Outlining my living conditions below, I want to know whether that is possible with those kinds of HDDs or if I need to make a ton of compromises and go with SSDs instead to protect my sleep. Looking at what I own now and how data has been growing, it would result in me owning 4 Exos/Ultrastars in the next 5 years at 18-22TB per drive in an unRaid-Array, one being a parity drive. I have no experience with these drives, much less in a home environment. Living in an 2room+kitchen apartment (with bad soundproofing between rooms) my options on where to put the server is pretty much limited to the kitchen, which is located next to the bedroom. Distance from the position of the server to somewhere it would bother a person's ear would be around 6 meters, not in a straight line. I have not settled on a case yet, so if a silent focused case can do the trick on those kind of HDD-noises, even if it includes some additional tinkering, I am open for recommendations that have worked for you. Please share your experiences.
December 1, 20241 yr Drives that big I wanted two parity - one lost is a lot of data (I'm only at 16tb drives at the moment) That said - they're not quiet, but walls or any other physical obstructions will help reduce noise levels a ton. Isolation mounted drives will help a little. My home office is in the room next to my server and I can hear drives spin up. Nowhere loud enough to wake me though. In fact, an upright freezer is notably more obnoxious - how is the fridge noise for you? It is the kind of noise I suspect you'll get used to ignoring. That said, sensitivity to noise while sleeping is so different for each person, it's hard to know.
December 1, 20241 yr Author 3 hours ago, _cjd_ said: Drives that big I wanted two parity - one lost is a lot of data (I'm only at 16tb drives at the moment) That said - they're not quiet, but walls or any other physical obstructions will help reduce noise levels a ton. Isolation mounted drives will help a little. My home office is in the room next to my server and I can hear drives spin up. Nowhere loud enough to wake me though. In fact, an upright freezer is notably more obnoxious - how is the fridge noise for you? It is the kind of noise I suspect you'll get used to ignoring. That said, sensitivity to noise while sleeping is so different for each person, it's hard to know. Fridge is inaudible at night from bedroom. I haven't thought about using similar sounds for references. That's pretty good idea. I'll try to emulate the clacking-sound by tapping on something, while a second person listens to it at night. The actual volume will be a fair bit of guessing, but I'll aim for twice as loud as an old 1TB hard drive I have that I can plug into a power connector in the kitchen. Maybe record and amplify it even. Thank you.
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