I bought 2 of the WD 18TB Easystores that recently went on sale. They both tested fine and so far seem to be functioning and performing fine but they are significantly noisier than the 8TB and 10 TB Easystores I had before. When data is actively being read from or written to the drive you can hear lots of mechanical noises from outside the PC case several feet away. It doesn’t seem to be unique to just one of the 2 I bought, they’re both similar. Is that usually a sign that the drive will be less reliable?
I put the server and drives in another room so I don’t hear it. but all the larger drives are 7200rpm so they are a bit noisier than some of the “smaller” 12tb and 14tb drives.