WD Ultrastar HC560 20TB Hard Drive Review, NAS Benchmark and PC Tests

[@joelnrs]

Hearing your battle and struggle over the years with seagulls has been hilarious! Best in depth reviews and analysis. Great work and appreciate the all of the effort you put in.

[@nascompares]

Cheers man. Also, THEY MUST BE STOPPED

[@tommybronze3451]

Just for statistics for anyone: Bought 4 on 6th August last year and yesterday (22nd June) one stoped to report back to controller and is now a brick on it's way to supplier. Good thing is that this drive has a 5 year warranty. Some additional info, the drive is laud. Technically it's the same sound level that other drives have, however the transient is far more pronounced and is shakes the enclosure a lot.

[@rfauske]

Great drives but I remember my first Ultrastar, they got called Deathstar as so many broke back then.

[@scottmuckleroy2195]

Hahaha! "I hate Seagulls". Thanks for the content, long time viewer, just sub'ed.

[@sekritskworl-sekrit_studios]

How loud is it (decibels)? Without using a standardized SPL measurement, it's impossible to tell. Even your video audio gain levels vary substantially from video to video. So getting an actual measurement.... The variances are too great to arrive at a reasonably comprehensive audio level between the "deltas".

[@mikemcdonald5147]

I think one of the biggest things you left out was the amount of seagulls you can store on a 20 tb drive. LOL You should do a 5 star rating but instead of stars a 5 seagull rating :) great work thanks for sharing and you do amazing work.

[@jacobp7289]

I have two of the 18TB versions of this drive in a DS1520+ and they are doing perfectly fine. I dont see any reason to pay extra for a WD RED or Ironwolf.

[@stevenvanpelt486]

I fully agree with you. I like his channel, but this review is flawed. I’ve got two Red Pro’s and two Ultrastar’s and they’re almost indistinguishable. All of them are 20TB disks. However, I remember having a 6TB WD Gold which was tremendously loud and vibrating like its life depended on it.

[@mrnokia7253]

Thanks Got one of the for my pc. Installing it was easy, just plugged it in as normal and initialised it in windows. (Single drive no raid). This 20tb drive is actually not that loud if you write single big files to it in sequence. But with random read/writes it makes a rackle as described. But since I use it for storing single big HQ 4K and 8k files, it's fairly quiet, and all I hear is my fans (I do my video editing on m.2 drives). I also have it on rubber mountings In my cabinet.

[@storiesmadevisual]

Hello. What is your pc?

[@mrnokia7253]

@@storiesmadevisual hi I have used it on my old with Asus X99-e ws and a new z790 proart wifi motherboard.

[@Starfals]

Are you doing the review on a boat lol, the seagulls are going nuts haha! Anyways, I'm getting this, but I heard it wont work on a PC cus its SAS or something, not SATA. I wonder whats the deal with that? Thats the only 1 they sell here from what the store owner said to me? Hmm.

[@Steve25g]

keep in mind, that a an enterprise disc, in sata, looses half of it's databus speed, SAS is able to write/read at the same time, and yes, I run these drives

[@DavidM2002]

Before anyone frags you for your spelling of Neighbours ( not Neighbors ), that is how the word - proper noun or not, is spelled in the world outside of the U.S. Yes, I know, far too many people don't know the difference between you're and your so I'm not expecting too many to even notice. But, just in case...

[@nascompares]

*smashes the heart and thumbs up button so hard that my screen cracked a bit*

[@smstnitc]

Nice breakdown of the differences in the drives. The drive noise (along with heat) are exactly why my 12 and 8 bay NAS' are in the basement. I only keep the 6-bay full of SSD's in my office.

[@1sonyzz]

it's not loud if you know how to isolate it properly, if not then it's users problem...

[@MetalMystica]

@@1sonyzz So can you give me some pointers on that besides velcro?

[@allenday5649]

Thanks for the noise test! I'd like to know, within a product line, how the noise increases as a function of storage capacity. Can you make a video about this with eg WD Red Plus from 8-20TB?

[@TecraX2]

6:00 - "This is in terms of hard drives, very close to the top tier, because this is "I Hate Sea Gulls"" 🤣🤣🤣

[@ArmChairPlum]

It makes you wonder if at any point to cram more data in, if they would increase the platter size physically and give oh I dunno a 5.25" hard drive!

[@WS-ct6th]

Thank so much !

[@1sonyzz]

Already have two of those drives in my computer for about 5-6 months, trying to get third one, missed out on lowest pre-order sale at 350gbp per drive, when pound dropped - price gone up to 566gbp then I've waited and price dropped down to 407gbp after a week or so thus jumped on third drive and pre-ordered it but, stock is yet to arrive at Scan...

[@George.Gadgets]

You saved me several times from buying enterprise level hdds which I thought would be better because of lower price and theoretical better performance, but which nobody says that are much much noisier and which is a very important point for a consumer. Now, which high capacity drive do you recommend me for having at home in a room where I do remote work most of the day? Thanks!

[@someetc3431]

Well what NASCompares say is that you can't actually have an enterprise level disk at your home NAS because it is much noisier. He even says that he doesn't care wether you have it on a top floor, you will hear it like a burglar spinning down infinite steps. I take his affirmations very seriously as I consider almost nobody has his experience and level. Almost no one else in fact analyzes the noise of hdd drives, and absolutely no one does it on a regular manner. Therefore his verdict must be taken as gold.

[@T3hderk87]

I have had this thought banging around in my head, what would the capacity be if we returned to the 5.25 hard drive standard?! Also, I hate seagulls.

[@dberry99]

My quick chatbox math says the drive is rated at 550 TB/y. That amounts to only 23 days of constant use at 269 MB/s. Is that actually the case?

[@Cinematographer_brenton]

awesome video dude!

[@blcjck8121]

I don't agree with your assessment Rob, these are awesome in regular DS', been running them for years. TBH if you are looking at NAS pro drives, go for enterprise. Ofc unless you have a fairly remote location like a basement/attic/garage not sensitive to noise to place it, don't choose these. But this is also true for pro drives, I believe your earlier noise test proved as much.

[@jorgemtds]

I have an external OWC hard disk enclosure. In it I have 2 18 TB Ultrastar's in RAID-0. Yes, they area little noise but I actually enjoy it. When the RED drives on my WD EX4100 NAS die I will buy Ultrastar's oy maybe WD Gold's. The RED's are pointless in my opinion.

[@jorgemtds]

As expected, one of the RED's in my WD EX4100 NAS has died. I replaced the 4 drives with WD GOLD 12TB. RED's are done for me. From now on it's either GOLD's or ULTRASTAR's... and I'm just a home user who values money.

[@SamGib]

Not all enterprise harddisk are loud. I got HC550 running on a dock for archiving. Its whisper quiet.

[@johnwaldmann5222]

My HC550 18Tb is quieter and faster than my red pro, and red plus, and way quieter than my WD Black. I run it bare on my desk as an archive drive. Only thing I have is a small usb fan to keep it cool. (Also keeps me cool.) I choose it for its durability, and reliability.

[@darthdank1993]

I have a 5 bay Synology with all 18tb from the Best Buy shuck special, I’m building a second 5 bay and noise is an issue. I’m fine with my current setup however considering upgrading to Ultrastar 20tb or 22tb….would I see more noise compared to the wd or Ultrastar 18tb? Enough to avoid using if noise is an issue?

[@storiesmadevisual]

Hello. I have an Asus Pro Ws x570-Ace motherboard. I want to upgrade to this hard drive. HC570 22tb. Windows 10 Pro. I want to connect to U2 with Sata mode. But wd says its only enterprise at support message. And Asus doesn't guarantee compatibility. I don't mind the noise. Workstation is on separated house compartment. Do you think it's safe to buy it or should i spend more money on a gold version for example.

[@JB-gx7vd]

@NASCompares: is noise level of WD Gold 20Tb the same? Is Gold any better for NAS use or just branding? thx

[@ErraticPT]

Got a 16TB white label drive shucked from a WD Elements. Turned out to be a relabled Ultrastar and boy is it noisy! Idle is OK but seek noises are ridiculous even more than old IBM drives which even at idle make a racket! P.s. Audio is out of sync from the beginning.

[@alexsarbu3978]

On QNAP, as the legend says purple means free (a disk not yet used for either data, spare or cache). Nothing to do with compatibility lists ;) But that's nitpicking, nice video although I'll avoid these drives due to their noise. And guess who helped me decide that.

[@Equality-Justice-Transparency]

I bought a second-hand 10TB Ultrastar-HCC510 - and then "by habit" tested it on a Desktop - with a 2021-model Motherboard from Asus. .. And, you will probably correct me - but, I was surpriced to discover, that it was not recognized. I then updated my bios to the latest - same result.. I then got anxious - had the person sold a faulty drive to me... But .. - sorry, a Seagull distracted me, for a moment (I needed to load my shotgun, and try to hit it😎 - which succeeded after some shots .. now I await the local police, since it is Denmark) - .. it works 100% on my NAS'es (Terramaster, Qnap). Being an amateur, and not having tried to put an "enterprise hdd" into a Desktop-PC before - I was surpriced! And, especially surpriced, because the drive is old, and could have been testes, by someone else, before me. (As it is, now, I have written to Asus - because, it is very okay, as an upgrade - to my PC's 4TB file-storage & backup-drive (bought back in 2014 !!)). [regarding old drives (2014): I am triple-securing /backing-up all my data - so a failing HDD is not a (big/essential) problem for me... on my desktops] [actually, I have not had a HDD failing, since 1999...] [my oldest drives, currently still in use, is bought back in 2009! (!)]

[@jeremymoon9088]

I want to know how the Toshiba MG07 & MG08 drives perform

[@phillvallace]

Are they really that noisy? I've seen some noise charts of the 16TB ultra and isn't that much more on paper, yes being quite & less power draw is good but I can't validate spending 20% more money for a product that is less durable like surely one should be able to try and build a sound damping enclosure or something

[@gamedoutgamer]

Exactly. Especially if the drive is spinning idle it's not nearly as loud as he insists.

[@DrRussell]

Is EAMR a proven technology? Also, isn’t EAMR microwave rather than heat, as in HAMR?

[@fredashay]

Helium is notoriously difficult to keep contained! no seal, not matter how perfect can keep it contained. Maybe if you weld the drive together, you might make a helium-proof case. So will the drive continue to work when all the helium leaks out after a few years?

[@Harmik2]

Still waiting for Synology 20TB drives. 😢

[@MetalMystica]

Why? You pay way too much for a relable Toshiba drive.. Just go for the regular Toshiba equivalent, it's only the firmware that differs them.

[@Scott-lc5kh]

Just picked up a few of these myself for my first Unraid build 👍 Now, time to watch the video, and find out that was a big mistake 🤦‍♂️ lol

[@ArtisticallyEligible]

just curious, why unraid?

[@Scott-lc5kh]

@@ArtisticallyEligible Heavily considered TrueNAS for a moment tbh, but ultimately for me it came down to two things. 1. I’m not going to be buying disks in quantity (6-12) each round (to expand my array a vdev at a time). Just too expensive an endeavour. So Unraid’s flexibility of adding a disk at a time was a must. 2. Software complexity and support. Unraid is ideal for the lazy hobbyist. I wanted something dirt simple to setup and configure, that if I get stuck, I can go somewhere and get simple responses to my issues. Other options, such as TrueNAS, while there is fantastic support for them, I know my technical capabilities, and didn’t want to get stuck with having to effectively google what a solution meant. My previous two NAS’s were Synology unit which, no exaggeration, I probably logged into the web OS maybe a dozen times in 10 years.

[@XtianApi]

There is nothing wrong with getting milk in a Ferrari. Mazerati? Well I don't know anything about that

[@kylebard]

"I hate seaguls"

[@kylebard]

6:08

[@kylebard]

8:38, seagul cries

[@JingleStic]

I just bought 3 of these. If they are any were near reliable as the old HGST platform they are designed off of. These will last a very very long time

[@Ruby_Mochii]

20TB HDD?!?! Step it up to 100TB SSD!

[@masaki23joe]

How do you get WD Ultrastar to work on a regular pc? I have ssd one

[@MetalMystica]

Just plug it in and format it. 😉 It will work just like a regular drive, but faster, will use more power and will be... noisier. A PC cage normally isn't isolated very well in most cases.

[@ВладимирГубин-м4х]

It will not work with a full-fledged SATA power connector (12V+5V+3.3V) because this disk has a "power disable future". It is necessary to cut off the 3.3 volt wire so that the disk turns on. Or power it with a Molex connector through an adapter.

[@MetalMystica]

@@ВладимирГубин-м4х Serious? Wasn't that only the case with chucked drives?

[@ВладимирГубин-м4х]

​@@MetalMystica tech-brief-western-digital-power-disable-pin.pdf. Search for this.

[@ubozkurt]

Neeed Helium Ultrastar DC HC560 & Nomal HDD SOUND TEST open nacked please

[@michaelnager6059]

What the fuck are you talking about with "Noisy"? I have Ultrastar 14 TB and 16 TB drives and you just can't hear them. Of course I buy the Enterprise drives, because they are cheaper than the far inferior "NAS" drives and they have 512 MB of cache which makes a big difference in speed. "They make a big old racket when they are working" - that's utter bullshit.

[@MetalMystica]

No, not really.. maybe your just used to the noise by now. But run a regular drive next to one of these and you will hear the difference pretty easy. Some don't mind, because when you have one (NAS) in the living room and you turn on the Radio or TV you won't hear the drives anymore. But in a quit room you will and for some that will be annoying, for others no problem. But... the noise test in these videos aren't what you will hear at home. The rattling (like a angry seagull rating in a cage) isn't something you will hear at home under normal circumstances. So, noise is something you tolerate or not.

[@r0tb3rt]

Am I the only one who notices that sound and picture are out of sync?

[@popquizzz]

I am consistently annoyed at drive capacity ratings being much higher than that of a typically formatted drive. As drive architectures hold greater and greater capacities that much more total space is consumed for non-usable purposes. Drive manufacturers know that people do not run uninitialized and unformatted drives in our systems yet they continue to quote a drive capacity of 20TB when in actuality it is about 10% less at 18.2TB when initialized and formatted. It's like the gas stations that still charge that 9/10 of a cent per gallon of gas on top of the dollar and cents price here in the US. Who are these people kidding?

[@shanent5793]

The amount of space consumed by formatting is negligible. The difference is only because some operating systems report the size in multiples of 2^40 instead of 10^12

[@dracwing24]

Not really the fault of hard drive manufacturers, but Microsoft being dumb and using the wrong units. 20 Terabytes(TB) = 18.18Tebibytes(TiB). Windows shows the numbers as TiB but the units as TB. 20TB is 20TB. Formatting and initializing a drive uses trivial amounts of space. You're not being cheated out of anything.

[@DavidM2002]

When you go to the lumber yard you will find that a 2x4 isn't 2.00" x 4.00" ( 8.00 square inches ). It's actually 1 1/2" x 3 1/2" (5.25 square inches - end measure) so you lose over 34% of the nominal dimensions to the planer mill. In comparison, actual usable HDD space at 90% of stated capacity is a relative bargain. Better buy 2 while you can before anyone else finds out...

[@alexsarbu3978]

​@@dracwing24 Actually it's the other way around: we were all using the correct (power of 2) units when the hard drive manufacturers figured out that using multiples of 10 would make their HDDs appear larger. And some people who shouldn't have been in charge of anything (not even tying their own shoelaces) agreed - thus, they repurposed TBs and invented TiBs.

[@KrunoslavSaho]

My new Steam drive.

[@keithd5181]

If they are anywhere near as reliable as the old HGST platform they are designed from these will last a very very long time.

[@TheStaniG]

I fucking weep seeing $525 CAD for this drive, a currency more or less the same as my AUD.... and yet the drives are $1,100 here :'(((

[@michaelnager6059]

Genius, that's because it is a shite, cheap enclosure and the drive is rattling around in the there causing noise. What you are basically saying is, "Don't buy a craptastic Synology NAS enclosure". Don't blame the drive for the inadequacies of the enclosure.

[@ggmgoodgamingmichael7706]

@ 12:43 😂🤣🤣