Vibration reducing screws

silence_seeker · Post by **silence_seeker** » Wed May 02, 2007 3:26 am

Having bought a "silent" drive (Samsung HD-400LD) which is nowhere near being silent because of its powerful vibrations I'm looking into methods of reducing this.
The drive is mounted in a OWC Mercury elite Pro al (Firewire 400/800, USB 2.0) fanless metal enclosure:

As you would imagine, there's not much room for modifications in such an enclosure, but I've had a look and found out that I can reverse the mounting-rails on each side of the drive.

1) Inside the enclosure with a 3.5" drive mounted:

2) The drive is attached to a mounting-rail on each side via screws:

3) A closeup of the rails (the red/black wires go to a power-LED):

4) simply by flipping the mounting-rails around I'm able to get a gap between them and the drive:

Here's a different view of the rails that have been flipped around:

This has given me an idea....
I don't know what's available out there, but I'm imagining a screw of some sort which is divided in two with some (soft?) rubber (or similar vibration-insulating material) in between, like this:

Now, if I could mount my drive with screws like that I'm sure I could isolate most of the vibration so that it doesn't pass on from the drive mechanism itself.

So, are screws like that readily available? Or does anyone have better suggestions?

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Wed May 02, 2007 5:04 am

Screws like that would not work (nor are they available as far as I know) as any material that would be stiff enough to hold up to the torque of the screwdriver to allow it to be driven, would be too hard to effectively reduce vibrations.

Maybe you can look into using small sorbothane blocks (or even foam) to sandwich the drive in the case without using screws. Maybe placing/wedging some materials between the HDD and the case it'll be stiff enough to hold it in place but soft enough to reduce vibrations.

Looks like you'll have to get inventive...

amjedm · Post by **amjedm** » Wed May 02, 2007 5:05 am

Can you put some Blu Tack / UHU White Tack in their for the drive to sit on?

ktriebol · Post by **ktriebol** » Wed May 02, 2007 6:24 am

My Rosewill case came with rubber grommets and shoulder bolts to secure the HDD's. It works quite well for reducing HDD noise. I looked around on the internet a bit but couldn't find exactly what is in my case, but here are a couple of links to the same kind of idea:

http://www.earsc.com/hddtechniques.asp

http://linitx.com/product_info.php?products_id=508

If you just do a search on "Anti-Vibration Mounts for Hard Drive" you will find others.

silence_seeker · Post by **silence_seeker** » Wed May 02, 2007 8:38 am

The problem with most of those "hard drive vibration reduction kits" is that they're mostly made for 5.25" drive bays in a PC case, not for external enclosures.

Would you mind taking a couple of photos of the way your drive is mounted? That would help me see what I should be looking for.