Everytime I upgraded my media drive I always bought the greens and I never had any problems, I was gutted when they stopped making the green drives.... They had stopped making the gold drives also, but for some reason they started making them again just before christmas.
Hard drive 'clicking'
- Thread starter ShivP
- Start date
I received the drive this morning and I had to check it to make sure it was correct before it went away for my birthday.. Normally drives are just in there anti-static bags wrapped up in bubble wrap, but no this one came in a small carboard box with the drive slipped in a sleeve very tidily done. I havent opened the anti-static bag as it had a label on the bag saying what it was and it looks all correct "WD gold 4tb"
When I get to use the drive this weekend I'll run a few benches of my old WD black 640gb and the new drive... At least this time when I hear it clicking, I will know their's nothing wrong with it and wont rma it, thats if everything reports good. The thing is, can I tolerate 2 clicking drives,, ummmmm
When I get to use the drive this weekend I'll run a few benches of my old WD black 640gb and the new drive... At least this time when I hear it clicking, I will know their's nothing wrong with it and wont rma it, thats if everything reports good. The thing is, can I tolerate 2 clicking drives,, ummmmm
I can just about hear the clicking of my red 10tb above my fan noise. With my pc being in my bedroom I need to find a good balance between low temps and quietness, as anyone can switch it on remotely, as I use it as a media server and a gaming pc.
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thx good to know, my current working reds only make a churn noise not a click but its the new norm now, yeah that is one of the big caveats to having a pc in the bedroom the noise factor.
Am certainly considering going a nas route and ditch all noisy mechanical hdds in it (with redundancy support) and put it in cupboard and SSDs only in main computers and systems for noiseless solutions.
Am certainly considering going a nas route and ditch all noisy mechanical hdds in it (with redundancy support) and put it in cupboard and SSDs only in main computers and systems for noiseless solutions.
If the drives are going to be shut away in a cupboard, you should'nt be able to hear them at all, because you will be amazed how quite things can be if they are in a decent box/cupboard.. But whatever you do dont sacrifice on air flow for a quieter system because high drive temp does nothing for reliability and this is what you are after. My drive temps are between 20-35c
I have my drives on show, on the floor of the case with 1cm high rubber feets for each of the drives, so the air can get all around and underneath the drives and to stop vibration aswel
I have my drives on show, on the floor of the case with 1cm high rubber feets for each of the drives, so the air can get all around and underneath the drives and to stop vibration aswel
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I've installed the drive and it works fine, lovely and fast too.. Im not sure if it clicks because of the clicking from my other WD drive but i'll report back later about that...
Here's some benches
The wd gold I sent back because of clicking
The new wd gold
My old wd 640gb black........ I should see quite a nice boost with the gold
case pics
Here's some benches
The wd gold I sent back because of clicking
The new wd gold
My old wd 640gb black........ I should see quite a nice boost with the gold
case pics
Nice speeds on those hard drives, I think with my old seagate and wd red nas drives I got 60-80MB on average, 130 MB on other files.
Still researching and digging into different drives and NAS/raid info but I think someone said it best to not always let marketing fool you and get the cheapest and biggest you can, I guess that makes sense if you have a proper back up (cloud storage or another back up else where or both) or use Nas/unraid with some redundancy in case of complete hdd failure.
Its very sneaky how WD got 3-year warranties on the NAS drives since they seem to die on year 4-6+ anyhow and the WD red pro comes with 5 years but cost silly amounts along with the golds (14tb).
Computer or hdd insurance only covers theft & accidents not wear and tear or electrical failure, pretty poor WD charge a leg for high capacity drives and no offer of a extended warranty plan really but it is what it is.
Still researching and digging into different drives and NAS/raid info but I think someone said it best to not always let marketing fool you and get the cheapest and biggest you can, I guess that makes sense if you have a proper back up (cloud storage or another back up else where or both) or use Nas/unraid with some redundancy in case of complete hdd failure.
Its very sneaky how WD got 3-year warranties on the NAS drives since they seem to die on year 4-6+ anyhow and the WD red pro comes with 5 years but cost silly amounts along with the golds (14tb).
Computer or hdd insurance only covers theft & accidents not wear and tear or electrical failure, pretty poor WD charge a leg for high capacity drives and no offer of a extended warranty plan really but it is what it is.
I guess if your drive is backed up, then theres no reason to get a good and expensive brand, because your only paying extra, with hope that your getting a reliable drive. I have only been backing up my media drive these last few year, because I couldnt bring myself to buy a huge hdd just for backing up, as its such a waste of a drive... I stumbled across "tape backup" and I managed to get a 2nd hand "lto 3 tape drive" for £20 and they are normally £100 for a good used condition and mine looks like new....
Brilliant much better idea then hdd for backing up a huge amount of data, a lto3 tape holds 400gb and Im on my 11th tape, and cost about £8-10 per tape.
Brilliant much better idea then hdd for backing up a huge amount of data, a lto3 tape holds 400gb and Im on my 11th tape, and cost about £8-10 per tape.
Those WD Golds are some of the best HDD's ever made, there fast and incredibility reliable. If you have important data these are the drives.
I've been using WD enterprise drives since 2008, never had an issue with a single drive.
The fastest ones I currently have are 7K6000 512e Ultrastars that are also produced by Western Digital, these drives click a little when first activated, but i'm not worried about it, it's just the design of the drives.
For best reliability HDD's need a little air going over them. I use Silverstone FT02 cases, and have a 180mm fan running at low rpm under the drive bays.
* This is absolutely true, all HDD's even the same models sound different. There is a company in US that build very high end workstations, they use WD enterprise drives, but they select them by listening to them with a stethoscope! So they listen to the drives, and fit the quietest ones into the high end rigs!
I've been using WD enterprise drives since 2008, never had an issue with a single drive.
The fastest ones I currently have are 7K6000 512e Ultrastars that are also produced by Western Digital, these drives click a little when first activated, but i'm not worried about it, it's just the design of the drives.
For best reliability HDD's need a little air going over them. I use Silverstone FT02 cases, and have a 180mm fan running at low rpm under the drive bays.
* This is absolutely true, all HDD's even the same models sound different. There is a company in US that build very high end workstations, they use WD enterprise drives, but they select them by listening to them with a stethoscope! So they listen to the drives, and fit the quietest ones into the high end rigs!
I was oddly looking at tape back up the other day it looks decent but I think my mind is set with unraid, you can just throw any size hdds in it and use the biggest hdd for redundancy so if any of your hdds on the array go bad or suddenly die you can just swap it out for the same size drive and unraid just rebuilds the lost data for you automatically. I may look into backblaze cloud £4-5quid per month can auto back up everything else with no data limits too, alternatively can attach a USB storage to unraid and use that as a separate backup for really important files. There probably is an app that can move or copy data on schedule too.
Its peace of mind and lazy proof which is up my street. Unraid also really spins down the hdds very well unlike in normal windows 10 so its going to be very green.
I was just reading the other post here:
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/bad-sectors-on-hard-drive-bin-it.18886738/
this poor chaps 14tb gold wd has bad sectors like I have on my wd red and naturally 'just' out of warranty, was hoping the golds were gold standard but its like I have been saying earlier maybe it's half marketing talk, I have 3tb ancient no thrills drive from 8 years ago still working fine, but a 4-year old WD red which is meant to be 'superior' build/feature wise its developed bad sector and now an £400 paper weight.
You would think WD or others could give an extended insurance on wear/tear or bad sectors or able to repair it, but they just want you to spend another £400-500.
that company sounds awesome I think I should be doing that on any hdd unit I buy, might save a giant paperweight in the future!
Raid is kind of a backup, but what if you had a virus like I did a few months ago, it overwrited about half of my media files, so I would have been screwed using raid as a backup.
But any drive can fail, its just bad luck if you get a faulty one, it doesnt mean to say they are bad drives, its just one of those annoying things. Also you get more negative reviews ect, because I for 1 dont bother reviewing or talking about a drive if its working.... But cross fingers, I have only ever had 1 drive to go bad on me in 20 odd years.
But any drive can fail, its just bad luck if you get a faulty one, it doesnt mean to say they are bad drives, its just one of those annoying things. Also you get more negative reviews ect, because I for 1 dont bother reviewing or talking about a drive if its working.... But cross fingers, I have only ever had 1 drive to go bad on me in 20 odd years.
Surely those tape backups aren't going to be any more reliable? I'm no expert on this so you can tell me otherwise, but look at VHS tapes and how they degrade. L
Apparently they are more reliable then hdds because you havent anything really to go wrong with them accept the tape snapping or chewing up. But these tape drives costs thousands new and a lot more advanced then a vcr player, as the new lto tape drives can write over 200mb/s and you can fit upto 12tb onto 1 tape. The new tape drives make mine sound totally rubbish as mine has a write speed of 60-70mb/s and holds 400gb on a tape, but it good enough for me and I just buy the tapes as and when I need them and they cost a fraction of the price then a hdd.
Whats more amazing is these tape drives are updated yearly, even though they dont sell many. I would buy a new lto drive in a flash if they dropped the prices by about 95%, because spending like 5 grand on a tape drive is silly
The latest lto drives/tapes holds 15tb(30tb compressed) data, amazing, but you dont get any compression if you backing just video files or I dont anyway. I am quite surprised as I would have thought I would see a small amount of compression. Like I have just backed up about 200gb of video files to tape and theres no compression at all. So it makes me wonder if my drive is working properly, but the health checks are good and the compression is turned on.