So I'm thinking about how to cooling the harddrives yet prevent vibration to transfer into the chassis. I was thinking a compromise would be to mount the drives to a aluminum bracket to provide cooling, but secure the bracket to the chassis with neoprene gasket or other material so that they don't contact. Basically the bracket would vibrate, but keep the drives cooler. While the vibration wouldn't transfer to the chassis itself. This would probably be a 4 drive bay.

Anyone tried this?

Your bracket idea may be similar to what was tested in this SPCR article.

Neoprene may not be as good at isolating the vibration as a suspension using elastic-type materials as was done here. There are also commercially available elastomer hdd isolation mounts that may work better than straight-up neoprene. Just do a search for elastomer and you'll find a bunch of threads on that topic.

Thanks, I guess I'll think about a heatsink plate with side mounting to the drives that is then suspended in a larger frame.

[quote="fmah"]Thanks, I guess I'll think about a heatsink plate with side mounting to the drives that is then suspended in a larger frame.[/quote]

My solution: I used 1 1/2" 'L' brackets purchased at Home Depot. I drilled out one side to fit a rubber grommet. This was attached to the drive cage using 3/4" #8 - 32 nyon machne screws and nuts. You have to fiddle to make the HD's line up; I mounted mine vertically. Solution here is to use flat rubber washers for spacing. I have mounted two drives using this method, noise is down heaps and temps dropped 3 degrees C.