This is a removable HDD cage from an Ever Case ECE3505. Hole cut in cage bottom for Scythe 100mm fan, 3/16" buna rubber (adhesive-backed) sides prepared with clearance for grommets. Note made to learn to focus new camera:



Ready for SP0822N HDD transfer from old cage to new:



HDD installed in new cage:



Ready to go!



When backing up C: to a second HDD as an image file using Ghost, the seeks could be easily heard using the old, untreated cage. With the new cage, the seeks are completely inaudible. I imagine that vibration noise would be attenuated as well, if I had any vibration noise to attenuate.

This is a combination of damping and mass loading. See McMaster.com, page 3328 to see the buna rubber used. The damped cage/fan assembly included 1/16", 3/32", 1/8", and 3/16" adhesive-backed buna rubber, the softest (30) they had.

I love the new Scythe 100mm fans; they have even less motor noise than the Global Win NCB 120mm fans, although it's hard to compare the two sizes.

Applying 1/8" rubber to one side of the 99.5mm fan and 1/16" plus 3/32" to the other side made the fan exactly as wide as the HDD cage: 4.20". Thus, when the 3/16" sides were applied, the stickum held the fan in place. A little super-glue was applied to the edges of the fan and the padding-rubber applied for sizing, but not to the big 3/16" pieces.

I applied 1/16" buna to the inside and outside of the bottom of the cage, to the outside top where possible, and to the inside of the cage next to the (top) HDD. I applied 1/8" buna to the inside of the cage next to the (deliberately missing) bottom HDD. The rubber pieces inside and next to the HDD slots had U-shaped cutouts to clear the hard mounts and the grommets.