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?
Not necessarily. If it sounds like it’s “grinding”, that’s bad, or “clicking”, like “tik tik tik tik” and the computer pauses for a second, that’s bad.