Recently, after rebuilding my computer, my Samsung 160gb 7200 drive was a lot warmer than before. Hot processors, powersupplies and graphics cards do not scare me, but many gigabytes of prescious music, photographs, documents and movies being stored in a 50 deg. c. harddisk was a tad on the uncomfortable side.
I had some 20x20x2mm aluminium tube left over, and a few minutes of sawing and drilling got me 2 nice heatsinks, screwed on both sides of the harddisk with thermal paste in between. This made the harddisk 4cm wider, and made for a 'sandwich' sort of fit between the case sides and the foam that is on both case sides.
On first boot, I noticed clear 'humming' noises and for the first time ever, I heard the Samsung seek quite audibly. The drive was still 'suspended' but.... how do I put this, too tightly sprung. I got rid of one of the two heatsinks, giving 2cm more space. The problem was less, but still there. I really couldn't hear the drive seek before, and now I could still pick up some seek noises.
I used to have the drive sitting on pritex 'knobbly foam'. This way only a few knobs (small contact area) support the harddisk, making it sort of a soft suspension. (low spring rate). Now I had the drive resting on two large blocks of foam, a large contact area with the same 'spring rate' as the knobbly foam. The large contact area meant that the effective stiffness of the suspension was higher.
So the looser you can suspend the drive, the better!
PS:
Original drive temps where 38..42
After the first rebuild they where 44..50 (I still don't understand)..
Now with the heatsink temps are 32..36
Suspending: major differences depending on the method used!
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