SPCR

Brian's at it again with his helpful technical guides! This one would undoubtedly benefit very brave SPCR'ers:

http://bbspot.com/News/2004/05/bbspot_l ... drive.html

Also of interest may be his popular guide on hard drive cooling:

http://bbspot.com/News/2004/05/bbspot_l ... drive.html

Brings to mind Rusty's hard drive immersion experiments...

Hilarious!

Maxamus wrote:Water aint coming near my new HDD's ever!!!!!

According to your sig, it already is.

Maxamus wrote:Although i have been looking into watercooling my hdd's lately

actually, i saw a really good guide on ice-cooling hard drives. Must be better than water.

griff

I'm not an engineer or a physicist, but I thought water was a great transmitter of sound, definately faster than air, mabye sound is lost in the transition from water to air though

The reason that water dampens sound so well is that it is dense and heavy. Sound is made by vibration, and dense/heavy objects take more energy to vibrate at a given noise level. In theory, a 1"-3" brass or lead shell that completely enclosed the drive would lower the volume and pitch of the vibrations to the point of inaudibility. (silence)

you guys are probably right, but solids do transmit sound better than gases, and I think liquids are in the middle somewhere. I have no idea what goes on at the transition between two mediums though.

From my understanding they transmit the sound better, but it takes more energy to put the sound into them.

You could use sand instead of water. This is a technique that has been used for years to dampen sound and vibration by audiophiles. Apparently, the individual grains of sand rub against each other and in the process dissipate the energy via friction.

Water would work, prolly very well. You would need at least 1" of water on every side of the drive.

Note that there would be the risk of a leak killing your drive.

If you're putting something in front of the drives only, I would recommend useing a heavy block of lead/brass/copper/gold or a VERY well sealed water container, and attach a 1/2" thick piece of foam to the drive side to dampen sound reflection. Without the foam the sound may bounce off of the block and back into the case. I would also recommend doing this to the sides of the drive.

Water does dampen, no question, compared to solids -- if you and the source of the sound are on either side of the water, not in the water.

Alternate concept for HDD water sound dampening:

• Make a 5 sided box a bit bigger than the HDD -- maybe 1" all around the circumference.
• Fill two very strong rubber bags with water. Think of something like small hotwater bottles. Place one on the bottom of the 5 sided box.
• Put the HDD on top of this. Put the 2nd rubber bag of water on top of the HDD.

Now the HDD is effectively floating in water, and the vibrations and noise have to go through the water bags to get out.

Someone here in the forums did something similar with sand.