I am new to this forum and would greatly appreciate some advice. I have a Dell Dimension 8200 PC which came with a 40gig WD 7200RPM hard drive. This Dell has room for a second hard drive within the enclosure that slides in place via two spring loaded plastic arms as with the orginal hard drive. Installed a Seagate 80g 7200rpm hard drive as back up directly adjacent to the original drive...slid it right in beneath the original drive... which now is the master drive with 40g WD older drive as slave. Works fine and successfully imaged my OS, applications and files etc to both drives. The issue is noise. I now have twice the hum/buzz of two drives relatively close together. Unlike running a single hard drive, running two becomes a pulsating droney low frequency hum...perhaps harmonically an interaction between each HD in terms of noise/vibration. I can unplug one of the drives of course but defeats the purpose for easy access. I have also taken a good look at wire routing etc to not further propagate sound transmission though the machine and have isolated most wiring away from resting on drive enclosures etc. Do I have any recourse short of a big tear up? The buzz/hum of a single drive though audible up close is really quite acceptable...also running a single quiet Nexus 92mm CPU fan which overall dramatically reduces PC noise from the stock lousy Dell CPU fan...but the rythmic low frequency hum of two hard drives really is nerve racking...just loud enough to hear the pulsing.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Eliminating low frequency hum of Two Hard Drives together...
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
To eliminate the pulse-like harmonics, you will have to mechanically isolate the drives, either by using rubber grommets or anti-vibration mounts such as these:
Anti-Vibration Mounts For Hard Drive
You could also try and suspend them, but from pictures of the 8200 case on the internet I doubt you will have enough free space.
Anti-Vibration Mounts For Hard Drive
You could also try and suspend them, but from pictures of the 8200 case on the internet I doubt you will have enough free space.
Can I ask which program you used? I recently tried to image my hard drive with Acronis True Image and it was a complete disaster. Was it the latest version of Norton Ghost?successfully imaged my OS, applications and files etc to both drives.
Jag thanks for your response. First...your question. The book on Acronis True Image is some earlier versions contained bugs. The story on my end is I tried to purchase Acronis TI 8.0 build level #937 but couldn't find a solid assurance that I would get the build 937 if I ordered TI 8.0 which is still available on-line. I called Tigerdirect.com and they said they dropped shipped directly from Acronis so I thought...well good, best assurance I would get the latest iteration. As it turns out apparently Acronis didn't have any more 8.0 level TI disks on hand and they shipped the latest version of TI 9.0 for under forty bucks. A sweetheart deal. 9.0 is incredibility user friendly...literally five steps to clone/image an entire hard drive. I didn't get real creative with partitioning since I only wanted a complete replicate of my OS, applications and personal files...since the price of memory is really coming down. I have never had a single issue.
You must have gotten a buggy copy of TI. Jag...call Acronis. You can also get later build levels by downloading right from their site...what I would try. Acronis is one of the highest rated imaging softwares out there and why I deliberately chose it over and above Norton Ghost which has had similar growing pains within each new version which makes an effort to become more Windows friendly over time.
Appreciate the lead on isolating my hard drives. Yes within Dell's clampshell body, there is limited room. The interesting thing is the pulsation of low frequency drone or hum...which I never expected. I can see additive noise level increasing...two 7200 RPM motors side by side...but the darn noise is rhythmic or cycling...presume it is a 60 cycle buzz but really distracting. I am running unplugged with my molex to the slave drive right now with both IDE cable select cables attached to respective drives. I may simply install a toggle switch to the red on my slave drive and enable it prior to boot...do my imaging, shut down the computer and turn the switch off. That way I don't needlessly idle my back up slave drive which I virtually never use except for back up.
Jag...do you know any companies in the US that sell similar isolator mounts for hard drives?...great link BTW...perhaps you live in the UK and would be easier to purchase locally.
Many Thanks.
You must have gotten a buggy copy of TI. Jag...call Acronis. You can also get later build levels by downloading right from their site...what I would try. Acronis is one of the highest rated imaging softwares out there and why I deliberately chose it over and above Norton Ghost which has had similar growing pains within each new version which makes an effort to become more Windows friendly over time.
Appreciate the lead on isolating my hard drives. Yes within Dell's clampshell body, there is limited room. The interesting thing is the pulsation of low frequency drone or hum...which I never expected. I can see additive noise level increasing...two 7200 RPM motors side by side...but the darn noise is rhythmic or cycling...presume it is a 60 cycle buzz but really distracting. I am running unplugged with my molex to the slave drive right now with both IDE cable select cables attached to respective drives. I may simply install a toggle switch to the red on my slave drive and enable it prior to boot...do my imaging, shut down the computer and turn the switch off. That way I don't needlessly idle my back up slave drive which I virtually never use except for back up.
Jag...do you know any companies in the US that sell similar isolator mounts for hard drives?...great link BTW...perhaps you live in the UK and would be easier to purchase locally.
Many Thanks.
No, it's not 60 cycle buzz. What you're hearing are beats. (Do check out the cool wiki - it gives a practical use at last for the sine rule you may dimly remember learning about at school.)cycling60 wrote:The interesting thing is the pulsation of low frequency drone or hum...which I never expected. I can see additive noise level increasing...two 7200 RPM motors side by side...but the darn noise is rhythmic or cycling...presume it is a 60 cycle buzz but really distracting.
Your two drives are similar, but slightly different. If they were truly identical in their sound signature, you wouldn't get the beats (the pulsing). But as it is, one ore more of the frequencies that they are producing is slightly different between the drives. What you hear amounts to a tone mid-way in pitch between the two tones being produced by the drives, and varying in volume on a frequency which is equal to the difference in the source frequencies.
It's quite a neat effect, and very useful when tuning a piano. It's also good fun to play around with when you're singing in a choir.
But it's crap in an HDD cage. My sympathies.
Oh, and Welcome to SPCR!
-
MikeC
- Site Admin
- Posts: 12285
- Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2002 3:26 pm
- Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
- Contact:
In audio hifi circles, there is another term for this: Intermodulation Distortion. or IM distortion, as opposed to harmonic distortion. Whatever you want to call it, mechanical decoupling of the HDDs from each other and from the chassis is probably necessary to eliminate it, as already recommended above.
I can attest to this first hand. Drove me crazy for about a year and a half until I found this site. I tried isolating with gromets, and sorbothane with absolutely no luck. So don't even waste your time trying those out.
I finally had to suspend with stretch magic. That did the trick. You should only have to suspend one of them though. Maybe in one of the 5 1/4 in drive bays?
I finally had to suspend with stretch magic. That did the trick. You should only have to suspend one of them though. Maybe in one of the 5 1/4 in drive bays?
Thank you for the welcome wainwra and to all for your learned explanations....really gives perspective. And Mankey thanks for saving me a boat load of time on needless remedies recognizing the Dell case is not known for its noise suppression in particular and I may be chasing my shadow for a measurable improvement. Mankey could you elaborate a bit please on what is stretch magic? Presume it is some kind of elastomer mounting...an elastic band or string perhaps?...designed to isolate and dampen vibration/sound? Please have a look at the environment for the two HD's below within my Dell. Any further information or recommendation as to how to mount the stretch magic based upon what you see would be much appreciated as I would prefer to keep both drives internal to the computer tower. Also repositioning the drives within the tower is dicey because air is drawn through the front of the case and over the drives where they are situated.
Many thanks for all the great responses.
P.S. I have reversed HD positions hoping for some noise relief but no improvement was achieved.
Master and Slave HD interior housing:
Many thanks for all the great responses.
P.S. I have reversed HD positions hoping for some noise relief but no improvement was achieved.
Master and Slave HD interior housing:
Stretch magic is stretchy plastic string that is used to make bracelets. If you do a search, there have been a few good threads on the subject.
From the picture of your case, it seems like your options are pretty limited. If I were you, i'd try suspending one of the hard drives in a cd-rom drive bay. That way, they wouldn't be able to do their "harmonizing" You'll run into a cable issue though, but you should run the hard drives on seperate IDE channels anyways. So you should have the top CD-drive on the same channel as the suspended hard drive, and the bottom CD-drive on the same channel as the hard mounted drive. If you are worried about your drive temperatures, you could try taking the face plate off of the 5.25 drive bay and letting air come over the suspended hard drive that way. Or, you could just ditch the stock hard drive cage, and make your own that will suspend both hard drives on the bottom of the case.
good luck.
From the picture of your case, it seems like your options are pretty limited. If I were you, i'd try suspending one of the hard drives in a cd-rom drive bay. That way, they wouldn't be able to do their "harmonizing" You'll run into a cable issue though, but you should run the hard drives on seperate IDE channels anyways. So you should have the top CD-drive on the same channel as the suspended hard drive, and the bottom CD-drive on the same channel as the hard mounted drive. If you are worried about your drive temperatures, you could try taking the face plate off of the 5.25 drive bay and letting air come over the suspended hard drive that way. Or, you could just ditch the stock hard drive cage, and make your own that will suspend both hard drives on the bottom of the case.
good luck.