How I Suspended Two Hard Drives in a Chieftec Dragon

aphonos · Post by **aphonos** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 10:58 am

How I Suspended Two Hard Drives in a Chieftec Dragon.

EDIT: See the article: Aphonos' 2-Drive Suspension

Updated the link, since I found someone in the forums had located this post, but could not find the article on the main site. 2011-01-24

Henrik · Post by **Henrik** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 11:14 am

Now, that is a perfect post! My compliments! Thumbs up!

Post by **Rusty075** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 12:16 pm

Nicely done. How much impact would you say it had on the noise?

Tom Brown · Post by **Tom Brown** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 12:59 pm

Thank you.

Take 20 karma points out of petty cash.

frosty · Post by **frosty** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 1:54 pm

Totally tops Aphonos! Love the idea with the clamps, I was just scratching my head last night trying to figure out how to do this with my solo maxtor, great idea! Also nice setup on your rig, clean cables makes mine look like a 3 year old put them together.

aphonos · Post by **aphonos** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 5:25 pm

Rusty075 wrote:Nicely done. How much impact would you say it had on the noise?

Oh yeah, silentpcreview.

I suppose I assumed the philosophy of suspending as a means of quieting drives and focused more on methodology.

I added two paragraphs above to discuss the effect on noise.

Harry Azol · Post by **Harry Azol** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 5:41 pm

looks good.. I'm going to try this soon

DryFire · Post by **DryFire** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 6:36 pm

that's very nice. i have a removable bay like that and i was thinking something along those lines.

I guess you saved me some time and experimentation.

frosty · Post by **frosty** » Thu Aug 21, 2003 6:47 am

I really need to do this since my system is at a silent state but suspended above in my 51/2 bay my Maxtor soars in the high forties!

attnet · Post by **attnet** » Fri Aug 22, 2003 8:12 pm

How much did shipping for those materials cost?

aphonos · Post by **aphonos** » Fri Aug 22, 2003 9:04 pm

attnet wrote:How much did shipping for those materials cost?

I assume you mean the shock cord from mcmaster, since I didn't list a vendor for the HDD and all the other materials were obtained locally. (a) I can't remember the shipping, since I got the parts in Feb/Mar and (b) the shock cord was part of a larger order, so my estimate would not be any help even if I dug out my paper work. Sorry, I know that's not much help.

This rest of this is off topic for this thread (so if you want to ask more mcmaster questions or make mcmaster remarks, please start your own thread), but if you'd like to get a shipping estimate from mcmaster (since their website doesn't give a shipping charge until after you place your order--search the forums for more on this if you're really interested), you can call their sales department. Numbers are available on their website. The charges tend to be right in line with either USPS or UPS shipping charges, depending on which method you select.

mfeingol · Post by **mfeingol** » Mon Aug 25, 2003 5:25 pm

After suffering from the infamous periodic hum problem, I was inspired by this thread to suspend my own drives in a similar manner in my Coolcases D8000. My two disks are a 200GB DiamondMax Plus 9 and a 120MB Seagate Barracuda V. Both are very quiet idle, but exhibit some vibrations. The Seagate is particularly bad in this regard.

I used a disk rail kit, some elastic cord from a sewing shop, the same rubber block and the same cable grips. I followed the example in the pictures, and managed to work around the absence of plentiful screw holes in the D8000's floppy cage.

The result: a complete absence of vibration transmitted to the chassis. This technique works much better than the rubber grommets in the D8000's default drive cage, and significantly better than the NoVibes III. For the curious, my experience with the latter is that its elastic bands are too tight: it will still transmit vibrations to the chassis from a high-vibration disk like a Western Digital.

My only concern is the temperatures: with a 5V 120mm fan blowing in on them, the two disks' temperatures go up 5-6 degrees C. With the fan at 12V, which is still pretty quiet thanks to the Acoustipack I added to the case, the rise in temperatures is 2-3 C.

Right now, with a 12V fan and with 80F room temperature, the case is at 32C, but the Maxtor is at 44C and the Seagate is at 46C. This is not high enough for panic, and I prefer these temperatures to the nasty hum, but I am a little bit concerned.

GenghiS_KhaN · Post by **GenghiS_KhaN** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 12:38 am

offtopic: How did you attach the blue fan grommets (I forgot the name) because when you remove those stupid purple things you have to do some drilling for the new 'screws'.

But I found out that 2 of the screwholes should be were the purple thing was attached?? I hope you know what I mean.
So I was wondering how you did this?
I was thinking about glueing a piece of metal over it and then drill 2 more holes....

any pictures or ideas would be nice

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 4:50 am

GenghiS_KhaN wrote: offtopic: How did you attach the blue fan grommets (I forgot the name) because when you remove those stupid purple things you have to do some drilling for the new 'screws'.

But I found out that 2 of the screwholes should be were the purple thing was attached?? I hope you know what I mean.
So I was wondering how you did this?
I was thinking about glueing a piece of metal over it and then drill 2 more holes....

any pictures or ideas would be nice

The new set of fan mounting holes ends up being almost exactly in the middle of the two existing holes. Look at the fifth picture down on this page for a good close-up of the fan mounts.

GenghiS_KhaN · Post by **GenghiS_KhaN** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 5:16 am

well my case is a bit different, it has room for 2 80mm instead of 1 92mm( ?)
I'll take some pictures to show you what i mean

edit: here are the pictures

The case with the ugly fan mounts
http://users.pandora.be/cats/simon/DSC00536.JPG

A fan where it should be, as you can see the screws on the left are hard to attach

http://users.pandora.be/cats/simon/DSC00538.JPG

note: sorry for the bad quality but taking pictures with one hand and empty batteries is kind of difficult

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 5:31 am

GenghiS_KhaN wrote:well my case is a bit different, it has room for 2 80mm instead of 1 92mm( ?)
I'll take some pictures to show you what i mean

Ahh, you must have an Antec SX10x0 or Chieftec Dragon style case with the square purple fan holders. It would a pain to mount the isolators to the case on those because of all the existing grillwork. Maybe you could try rotating the fan/hole pattern until it clears any existing grillwork. You really do need the correct size holes to use those isolators so I'm pretty sure you couldn't get away with using the existing square grill holes..

GenghiS_KhaN · Post by **GenghiS_KhaN** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 5:36 am

thats what I thought
but it think i know a solution

if i glue a metal washer on top of the square hole it or just attach a metal washer over the rubber grommets, something like that...

well, i'll find something fans aren't here yet so... more time to think

aphonos · Post by **aphonos** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 9:45 am

GenghiS_KhaN wrote: offtopic: How did you attach the blue fan grommets (I forgot the name) because when you remove those stupid purple things you have to do some drilling for the new 'screws'.

But I found out that 2 of the screwholes should be were the purple thing was attached?? I hope you know what I mean.
So I was wondering how you did this?
I was thinking about glueing a piece of metal over it and then drill 2 more holes....

any pictures or ideas would be nice

This is a cut and paste from my post in Dragon Jealousy, Talking Shop:

aphonos wrote:I have also cut the grills out and removed the plastic fan mounts. I have my fans (1 intake and exhaust [note: this is now a different setup than when I first suspended the HDDs)]) mounted using EAR isolators. The holes that are left in the case after removing the plastic fan mounts looked like this (X and Y being the holes and the other lines representing the edges of the hole from the cut-away grill):
Code: Select all
  
            X/---------\ 
             |         |Y
             |         |
             |         |
             |         |Y
            X\---------/ 
I was able to use the EAR isolators in the X holes and drilled new 3/16" holes in the case in the Z position pictured below:
Code: Select all
  
            X/---------\Z
             |         |Y
             |         |
             |         |
             |         |Y
            X\---------/Z 
Someday I'll get around to posting pictures of this.....

I used two different methods for marking the new holes. For one set I just held up the 80mm fan chassis and marked through the holes with a pen. For another set, I scanned the 80mm fan chassis, printed the results, and used that piece of paper as a template.