Mounting HDD with double sided tape?

Woodzzter · Post by **Woodzzter** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 4:32 am

I am currently toying with the idea of mounting my hard drives vertically using double sided foam tape. The case I have is a Silverstone LC17 which doesn't really have any 5.25" bays for HDD's (my system has 3 Samsung drives) I do however have 2 separate 3.5" bays each of which can take 6 drives. My idea was to mount them vertically using double sided tape to secure them to the side of the drive bays.

Are there any inherent problems with doing this and which side of the drive is better to have facing "into" the drive bay (ie: not the side that is secured). Obviously this is providing I can get tape on to the underside of the drive so that it does not touch any componentry. Which side of the drive gets hottest (if any) and would most need to have air flowing over it - the top or bottom of the drive?

gud4u · Post by **gud4u** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 7:22 pm

The problem with suspending a drive with tape is that the tape is not elastic - thus it would probably not decouple mechanical vibrations very well.

For my older Antec 10xxx case, the best drive-decoupling suspension I've found is pillar-mounting the HD from the floor of the case, using 4 each 5/8" diameter 'Frost King' poly foam caulking sections, cut to 1" length. The drive is inverted (circuit board up) and the foam pillars are glued between drive and case floor. The loudest components in my case are now the 120mm Nexus case exhaust fan and 92mm Nexus heatsink fan.

The reason for the 1" length pillars is to raise the drive enough to be cooled by front intake air stream.

Hope this helps!