[asksomeoneelse]

I made a storage server a few weeks ago. I experimented a bit with various HDDs before choosing, and the difference in noise seemed kinda massive depending on what model you go with. I tested with some Seagate IronWolf Pro 20TB and WD Red Pro 20TB, and they were indeed pretty noisy. Clearly too noisy to have in a room where people live. On the other hand, the WD Red Plus (only 14TB max though) are surprisingly quiet. I put 11 of those in a good case (Fractal Define 7), and the whole thing is barely audible. Even with some heavy I/O task going on (e.g. ZFS scrub), you could hardly guess that the server is running over the background noise of my fridge and ventilation.