Hard mounted HDDs in Fractal Define R3/R2

[markanini]

Today I re-arranged my room and found the hard drives more audible than before. It's a type of constant low frequency noise as well as a low thud during seeks. If you read the review by Lawrence Lee he hints at the HDD trays having a resemblance to Antec side mounted trays. I discovered it was not only a resemblence, my Antec Sonata trays we're a perfect drop in! Using these plus the white soft rubber grommets from my Antec Solo reduced the low frequency noise from my hard drives quite a lot. Before I heard faint noise from my 1.5TB WD GP and louder noise from my 3TB WD GP. Now the 1.5TB is inaudible and the 3TB is quite faint. I guess it's down to the thicker and thus stiffer material used by Antec that reduces the vibrations. The white soft rubber grommets from Antec are larger and perhaps softer which might be helping matters as well. Higher frequency seek noise is unchanged, but the included damping in the R3 does a pretty good job at reducing that.

Hope this helps some R3/R2 owner who likes their HDDs hard mounted. If you're interested you could order a HDD tray like the one I concocted as a spare part from any Antec retailer:

[kuzzia]

Wow, that's nice. I didn't know the hard drive bays would be so similar. Aren't the rubber grommets included with the HD bays from the Antec Sonata the same as those from Antec Solo? It's better to only buy one spare part than two, right?

[markanini]

I still have the old Sonata I which came with stiffer black rubber grommets. AFAICT The Sonata III came with the same white soft rubber grommets and longer screws like the Solo/P150 but otherwise unchanged trays. If you have Sonata I/II trays Antec has the newer white grommets as a separate part. With all that said YMMV. Do you have a Fractal R3, kuzzia, or perhaps a Sonata?