Hey guys, do you have any idea of a HDD silencer box that can be used with my SOLO's suspension mounts? I can hear the clicks from the HDD when its loaded...

If I were to add nylon clips or P clips on the bottom of the drive (both front and back) and have holes on both sides of the 5.35 cage, could I just use nylon cords, one on each side to tie them down? Seems like it wouldn't transfer the vibration, the clips will keep them from sliding backwards or forwards and also the tension from the right and left side should keep them from sliding from left to right.

I currently have a WD5000AAKS drive hard mounted in the standard drive cage of my Silverstone LC17 cabinet. This causes some vibration hum when the computer is put in my hifi rack, but not much hum when the computer is put on a normal table.

Almost all of the vibration hum is eliminated if I place the computer on some soft material, e.g. packing material for sensitive electronics. I plan to make it look a bit nicer by mounting the packing material permanently under a piece of wood that I will let the computer rest on.

Maybe this is not enough the take away vibration hum from any kind of computer cabinet but it works surprisingly well on my Silverstone cabinet. I guess the cabinet itself is so rigid that it will not vibrate much. It also works quite well on some Lenovo SFF desktops we have at work.

Cirkus

Hi,
my 2 cents on this sticky : if you use the grommets on the HD trays in the Solo case, I've noticed they do a better job in reducing vibrations if you put the tray upside down (that would be with the HD's PCB pointing up). You end up with the HD suspended.. in a way...

maybe there should be a note on the sticky about enabling AAM, and how to do it-not everybody knows it.

I just installed my HDD inside a Xilence HD Cooler CL...

A little disappointed by the noise reduction, or lack of it, to be honest, but it certainly keeps it cool. 6 or 7 degrees C lower than before (now at 33 C). Mind you it was elastically suspended before, so I might try elastically suspending the whole thing as well and see how that does. It's a little narrower than a 5 1/4 inch bay and the mounting grommets are removable, so it might be possible to suspend it where it is.

Hmm... there are many products and self-made solutions out in the field that are not listed in the sticky. And some grommet using products are better than others even when the same design is used. I'd really love to see an update of this sticky!

I am looking at the same thing. I was thinking of foaming it up. The tone of the hard drive spinning bothers me.

Hi,
You have to use a 2,5 HD in an enclosure to make it fit in the Solo. Otherwise, you have to mount in vertically but that means you'll have to get rid of the suspensions of the Solo.

..this is my home made solution.. a combination of half-close enclosure and anti vibration stuff... using the material shown aside the enclosure..

After this solution I cannot hear any sound at all from the HDD.. neither on seek, idle or vibrations.

http://peecee.dk/upload/view/159900

http://peecee.dk/upload/view/159900/full

Regards

seconded

I second that too. And also solutions which not only decouple but also tackle the inherent HD idle noise. My brand new spinpoint F1 has that nasty high pitched tone. No decoupling will solve that I'm afraid.

In my old case, I used elastic suspension. I switched to an Antec P183 since, and the silicone grommets in the HDD bays are almost as good as elastic suspension. They dampen vibration almost completely (though this ability may be amplified by other attributes of the case).

Suspension was quieter, but only by VERY LITTLE. And I can't even tell for sure as when I switched cases, I added a new HD as well (WD Green 1.5tb). So the extra noise may be caused by the extra HD, and not the lack of suspension.

But, it's quiet enough so I can sleep with my system going at night (about 2 meters from my bed).

I've had a number of cases, and neither the provided mounting or any modification I made could remove all of the HD vibrations. So, I decided to take a more radical approach:





Coolermaster Stacker 4in3 module placed inside an old subwoofer box lined with acoustic foam, cooled by a 22cm akasa fan running @ 5v, connected to the PC via an extended molex + 100cm sata cables.

HD temps are 5-7c above ambient with no vibrations and very quiet (not silent as they are Samsung F3s).

Full size images:
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo32 ... ru/top.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo32 ... u/back.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo32 ... /front.jpg

I know, the fan need a good clean

For those of you concerned with drive temperatures you should read this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=google+h ... =firefox-a

Click on the PDF. See figure 4.1

Don't worry too much about drive temperatures. Also read the conclusions. If your drive gives you an error prepare to replace it.

How's that working for you. I have an 8 drive home server which will become a 16 drive home server very soon and I've realized this approach is the only way. I will put the whole thing inside a kitchen cabinet as well. Does it get rid of all HDD spinning noises?

I just came across this new "spring mounting" pattern for hard drives which supposedly "kills vibration"...

What's your take on it?

http://www.rwlabs.com/article.php?cat=& ... genumber=6

Does anyone have any recommendations for the kind of soft foam I should use to lay my HDD on in the bottom of my case?

Try a piece of the thin light open-cell foam which protects motherboards from shock in their boxes. If this is too thin, try two layers -- maybe fold one over. Putting the HDD on it upside down may help w/ cooling -- the heavier cast aluminum on the bottom dissipates more heat than the thin steel top cover.

Something like this?

http://www.amazon.com/Techni-Stat-Conductive-Foam-Low-Density/dp/B000PDKYXU/ref=pd_cp_hi_2

Just flipped mine upside down and it got cooler by ~1°C at idle and 4°C (from 40°C to 36°C) after an hour of constant sequential activity. Not bad for a "free" method. Thanks.

P.S. Thta's a single-patter EcoGreen 503HI sitting on a piece of foam in the bottom of the case.

Need opinions on the Sharkoon Vibe Fixer.

Considering it looks exactly like a NoVibes, can one assume it's as good?

yes

This might sound like a noob question but here it goes:

When using sewing elastic (something like this) should the elastic be tight or somewhat loose? Could a very tight elastic suspension transmit vibrations?

I'm talking about a over and under setup like this.

look into isolating the hard drive (aka shock-mounting it). This will reduce the amount of vibration transferred to the case.
I second that.Try these SilenX Hard Drive Grommets

After having swapped my OS HDD with an SSD, I can clearly hear the annoying noise coming from my HD503HI storage disk.
I've always wondered what if my Thermaltake V9000A plastic rails had foam stripes on their external sides. I guess that the vibrations transmitted to the case would be dumped.

Old question, but for the benefit of anyone reading this thread... In my experience:

Tight elastic or sewing cord: A tiny bit of vibration is transmitted, but it's still far better than direct metal-to-metal contact.
Loose elastic or sewing cord: Virtually no vibration is transmitted to the chassis.

I don't understand some of you guys running your disks without silencing enclosures and yet wondering how to make the drives less noisy with spring mounting Its the first thing to do to put the disk in the best silencing enclosure you can find and than care about mounting or whatever.
I am also curious why some of you cool those disks at all - are you getting temperature over 60 degrees celsius without a fan?
Depends on the usage but unless you run some database with disks heavily active in raid i would say hard drives can be idle most of the time and stay pretty cool even in silencing enclosures and without a fans.
If you don't have an SSD, buy one now.
The only thing that bothers me is the lack of RAID/JBOD enclosures with 5.25" bays to be loaded with hdds in enclosures.
From my personal experience with one enclosure, the difference in noise level is night and day between the bare drive and silenced one. And when you put that into properly dampened external box, its can be made almost silent!

I know it's a very late answer. I currently use the exact same version of the Sharkoon VibeFixer as shown in the link on an ancient WD Green 500 GB. And I can confirm that it eliminates all vibration-induced noise.

My theory on this paper is that temperature swings are more responsible for HDD failure than average temperatures.

I don't want my NAS box to have hard drive failure, run hot or make noise so I filled it with WD red drives which test out as about the coolest running HDDs you can get so I decided to cool them by locating them directly behind my case intake fan.

That seems to go against the data in the Google paper but since the operating temps are so close to ambient, I figure a constant breeze will reduce the amplitude of the swings down to just a few degrees which is close enough to zero that neither absolute temperature nor temperature swings will contribute to hard drive failure.

So far, so good but it will take a few years before I can become a single data point.