This is my experience. I had them on my desk in a test bay to make sure they were all good to go and the only time I notice them is when they’re doing a lot of read/write movements. While they idle they’re quiet. So it depends on your use case, where the drive physically is, and what the drive is attached to. If it’s mounted with nice rubber dampers or something you might never hear them. If they’re mounted up to a loose chunk of metal they might rattle and drive you nuts.

I just grabbed a pair of 18TB Seagate Exos SATA drives - surprisingly quiet for what they are.

This is exactly how my local municipal fiber network works. The the county owns, and builds put, the fiber network and maintains it, selling network access to local ISPs who sell to customers.

Only shitty part is that if you want to have a connection built out that isn’t on their plan, you have to fund the fiber run to you from wherever the nearest spot is, and that can be many thousands of dollars.

I imagine if we expanded the program like you’re talking about in the rest of the world, we could actually run it fine, like, we have the ability to… It’s just that the people in power are fucking awful.