SPCR

this is an alternative to m0002a's Yet Another Drive Suspension System modified to fit in common cdrom bays (credit for the idea goes to m0002a).

i was having a problem with high pitch noise coming from my hard drives. most of the information i read on this site led me to believe that a hard drive enclosure would be needed to silence the high pitch noise, but when i tried placing a hard drive on a couple pieces of foam, the noise was dramatically reduced. m0002a's Yet Another Drive Suspension System seemed like the best solution because the drives are suspended and securely in place.

here is how i did it:


1) hammer a piece of flat aluminum around a 6"x2" piece of wood (really 5.5").


2) cut off the ends of the bar (can be done with a hack saw). drill holes in the side as close as possible to the corners. drill larger holes in the center to place rubber grommets in (use a hard drive to mark where holes should be drilled).


3) cut up a foam insulating gasket into small squares to use as shock absorbing materal. insert 6-32 1/2" screws in each hole with foam in place as shown in the photo. note: you will probably want to put the mounts in the middle or top slot of your cdrom drive bay to allow room for screwing in the bottom screws. my cdrom bays didn't have the correct screw holes, so i had to drill an extra hole in each side of the cdrom drive bay 44.5 mm from the existing hole. if there will be a cdrom in the slot below the hard drive, bend the aluminum mounts upward (by hand) to allow clearance for a cdrom to slide under it without touching the screws.


4) mount the hard drives by gently screwing in the screws until you feel a very slight amount of resistance. put the cdrom(s) back in. place foam between the screws and the cdrom drives to make sure no vibration is transmitted to the cdrom and the rest of the case.


5) bottom view of mounted drive.


6) side view of mounted drive.

these mounts were very effective at silencing the high pitch noise that the hard drives were producing.

Excellent implementation. I only wish that I had 5.25 bays to that.

I would make one suggestion, however. I would put foam between the screw and the grommet on the underside of the flatbar. A washer would keep the screw from going through the foam. This should provide some extra isolation from the grommet, which would only have minimal lateral pressure on the screw (assuming the case is not used sideways).

very nicely done

It is probably hard to imagine how good that foam (wall plate insulating gasket, available at Home Depot) is until you try it, but it is nice to see someone else who got the same results I did using it.

I have quieted 2 systems with that foam. One is an old Gateway P3 with twin 5 year old IBM disk drives (the noisy ones). They are now quiet.

I also used the foam with my Sonata drive tray installation (see the other thread) with 3 Western Digital drives, 2 of which were pre-fluid dynamic bearing version, which vibrated so much that I am sure that they are illegal to sell those drives in Alabama. Made them virtually silent.

On top of everything else, the gaskets are fire and electrical rated to put inside a 120V electrical box. Also, works great as general sound proofing when glued to the side of a case. Cheap as dirt also.

m0002a wrote:Excellent implementation.

thanks.

m0002a wrote:I would make one suggestion, however. I would put foam between the screw and the grommet on the underside of the flatbar. A washer would keep the screw from going through the foam. This should provide some extra isolation from the grommet, which would only have minimal lateral pressure on the screw (assuming the case is not used sideways).

i didn't put foam there because the cdrom wouldn't have had room to slide under it. next time, i could shape the aluminum so that it's a little higher up. with the current setup, it wouldn't make much difference because there is no pressure between the screw and the rubber grommet.