hard drive on foam

[coconut]

I'm trying to install a 2.5in Toshiba hard drive (MK4026GAS) in a Pundit P2-AE2. My initial plan was to place the HDD in a homebrew enclosure following the example of Hifriday who used a pencil case, a gel pack and some foam. I have found an aluminium pencil case which just about fits in the hard drive cage but I have yet to find a suitable gel pack.

I'm considering temporarily resting the HDD on a bed of 14mm thick packaging foam which I happen to have lying around. Is this likely to cause any problems? In particular, I'm worried about static electricity and temperature control. Should I avoid placing the HDD on the foam before plugging the system into the mains? Any feedback will be gratefully received.

[McBanjo]

That depends a bit on what packadge foam it is. But to be sure you could wrap it up in a anti-static bag before you put the HDD on it. Should eliminate the possibility all togheter.

Temperature it's no worries. HDDs doesn't get warm enought and the heat rises upwards anyway.

[CA_Steve]

Bagging the HDD is a bad thing to do. Even though they only consume a small portion of the PC's power, HDDs do generate heat, and are the most susceptable piece of hardware in your PC to dying early from heat.

A poorly vented HDD can easily rise 30C above ambient.

[IsaacKuo]

There's no problem with bagging a 2.5" drive.

[autoboy]

Why don't you bag the foam?

[nici]

If you bag the foam turn the bag inside out, the outside is conductive and the inside is not, putting electronics against the conductive side is not a good idea

[CA_Steve]

2.5" and not 3.5"...That will teach me to read/reply before my morning coffee.

Still, I'd opt for turning the bag inside out and bagging the foam instead of the drive.

[tay]

Here is another simpler idea. Turn the drive upside down. It keeps the electronics off the foam and gives it more air.

[coconut]

Thanks for the replies, all. As a temporary solution, I've placed the hdd on a piece of foam which is actually just a mousepad turned upside down. I'd have liked to turn the drive upside down, as suggested by tay, but unfortunately the IDE cable is rather short and unwieldy.

I'm not sure that putting the drive on packaging foam, as I did originally for a few minutes, was such a good idea. That foam had a very dry feel to it and I could feel some slight tingling on my fingertips when touching it.

The drive does get hotter on the upside-down mousepad than it did when housed in my laptop. Seek noise is also much louder, but then in the laptop it was encased in a plastic caddy which might have had the effect of dampening the noise.

[McBanjo]

2.5" and not 3.5"...That will teach me to read/reply before my morning coffee.

Still, I'd opt for turning the bag inside out and bagging the foam instead of the drive.

Who said anything about bagging the HDD? That would be a rather silly solution

[McBanjo]

The drive does get hotter on the upside-down mousepad than it did when housed in my laptop. Seek noise is also much louder, but then in the laptop it was encased in a plastic caddy which might have had the effect of dampening the noise.

It might be bether airflow in your laptop than at the bottom of your case, try to raise the HDD a few cm. Might help
You have a straighter path between the HDD and your ear now, I assume And the plastic might helped some as well

[wwenze]

What foam is that? Styrofoam? Household sponge? Or anti-static foam?

Anyway I've been running stuff with PCBs on top of all 3 and nothing big has happened. The heat from a Maxtor has melted some of the sponge though.

[coconut]

Hi folks, sorry for the delay in responding. I don't know what kind of foam it was exactly (looks like ordinary white packaging foam), but I'm worried it might have damaged my IDE controller with static electricity.

I've posted a description of the problem here. Please check it out and let me know if you have any thoughts.

[QuietOC]

I'm trying to install a 2.5in Toshiba hard drive (MK4026GAS) in a Pundit P2-AE2. My initial plan was to place the HDD in a homebrew enclosure following the example of Hifriday who used a pencil case, a gel pack and some foam. I have found an aluminium pencil case which just about fits in the hard drive cage but I have yet to find a suitable gel pack.

Unless you are also doing Hifriday's fan swap, there is no reason to use a 2.5" drive in the Pundit P2-AE2. The stock ASUS fans, while fairly quiet with Q-Fan enabled, are louder than a normal 3.5" FDB drive like the WD2500KS mounted normally in the Pundit.

I also don't think gel packs are of any use for cooling--other than being heat storage (thermal mass).

If I were mounting a 2.5" drive in a stock P2-AE2, I would probably just use some small chunks of foam to wedge it in place (dampening), and still leave some of the drive exposed to the meger airflow from the side vents (cooling).

Good luck!

[coconut]

Unless you are also doing Hifriday's fan swap, there is no reason to use a 2.5" drive in the Pundit P2-AE2.

That's what I was planning to do before running into trouble with errors in Windows Event Viewer.

I also don't think gel packs are of any use for cooling--other than being heat storage (thermal mass).

Do you mean that they would retain heat rather than dissipate it?

I think their use would have been more as a substrate for a drive shut up in an enclosure rather than for cooling purposes.

[QuietOC]

Do you mean that they would retain heat rather than dissipate it?

I think their use would have been more as a substrate for a drive shut up in an enclosure rather than for cooling purposes.

They are heat storage containers--that is what they are designed to do. The plastic bag is mainly an thermal insulator. Copper and alumunim store heat too, they just are also very thermally conductive. Even if the gel is a decent thermal conductor (which it probably isn't) the heat has to twice pass through highly thermal resistant plastic.

[jaganath]

Copper and alumunim store heat too, they just are also very thermally conductive.

Technically nothing "stores" heat; some materials are very good at conducting heat and some are very bad, we call the former conductors and the latter insulators but really they are opposite ends of a continuous spectrum. You could describe a Thermos flask as "storing" heat but really all it is doing is retarding the rate of heat loss to the environment to a very low level.

[TomZ]

Sorry guys, this thread has a lot of bad ideas.

Foam under the hard drive. Bad idea because most foams generate lots of static electricity (exception: some foams are specially treated to be anti-static; but most are not). Second reason is that putting foam next to a HDD will retard the dissipation of heat generated by the HDD, thus raising the HDD's operating temperature. Temperature is bad for HDDs.

Gelpacks under/around hard drive. Same as above. Plastic is bad for static electricity, and gelpack just retards heat relative to free air. Only exception is a frozen gelpack, but that is kind of a pain to be shuttling them to-and-from the freezer.

Anti-static bags around the hard drive. Bad from a heat flow perspective. HDDs are designed to transfer heat to the air and to the case when mounted. Bags will slow this down.

Combinations of the above: very bad. Expecially HDD on foam surrounded by bag, with gelpacks and then sealed into an aluminum enclosure. End result: toasted HDD.

Suggestions: buy a quiet HDD; soft-mount the drive, small inaudible fan to move air across the drive, etc.