Speaking of seeking, if the data was laid out sequentially on disk, and the computer was not accessing any other files on the disk in question (spinning disks for movies and other data, SSD or m.2 for OS itself), then it would be very silent. But my impression is that a lot of the time we end up with files fragmented more than what is desirable. That's another wish of mine, that I would have a system that would keep this in mind and which would be better tuned to my use. Maybe one day.

> if the data was laid out sequentially on disk, and the computer was not accessing any other files on the disk in question (spinning disks for movies and other data, SSD or m.2 for OS itself), then it would be very silent

That's not true. Even a spinning sound of a 5400 rpm disk makes quite loud.

Whether you can hear it due to casing or distance is another matter. Most of the time fan noise will make you ignore it. When fan is not spinning I can hear laptop drives clearly.

Windows had (has?) a defrag tool for this purpose. With SSDs, it's not an issue.

Windows 10 had a bug this year where it defragged the SSD (yes) on every boot instead of once a month.

Wow first I've heard of this, do you have a source? I'd like to read more about it.

7200rpm is a bit noisy compared to 5400rpm but if 7200rpm is unacceptable, it's better to use SSD or NAS rather than 5400rpm HDD.

The noise specifications for the drives are available from the WD prior to purchase.

It is very hard to trust hard drive manufacturers these days. I have a few of these drives mentioned here https://www.seagate.com/www-content/datasheets/pdfs/ironwolf... with the specified "typical" noise level of 25 dB for seek and it is definitely much much more than that.

Synology forums have several threads like this: https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/1/post/130843

And I understand that these are different companies, but why I even went for Seagate was because of the CMR issues.

Yeah but they'd probably lie about that too, based on their recent track record.