Good sound damping material (quieting old pc hdd)

fredk · Post by **fredk** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 8:46 pm

I have an old P3 I will be using as a firewall, and I want to quiet the hard drive. I have read the threads about putting the drive in an external box with gel packs, but this is going to sit in my livingroom so I don't want an ugly mess.

Was thinking of building a small vented wood box and lining it with sound damping material. What would make a good sound damping material for high freqency noise?

Thanks.
Fred

ozdoc · Post by **ozdoc** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:48 am

What hard drive do you currently have, and what sore of noise is it making? (whine? resonance? seek noise?)

The external boxes with gel packs are generally placed inside the computer. I've made a few for the kids old computers and they work a treat. Then there's always the commercially made hard drive enclosures.

Alternatively, if it's just for a firewall, what about a low capacity cheap 2.5" harddrive? It's better to have low noise to start with than having to dampen down the noise.

Das_Saunamies · Post by **Das_Saunamies** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:06 am

Would go with the 2.5" approach as well. Slap that on a block of foam and voilÃ¡.

With regular drives the pre-made silent enclosures are a pretty surefire bet when it comes to ease of use. They do a decent job with cooling besides just silencing.

fredk · Post by **fredk** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 11:07 am

The noise is a high pitched whine. I suspended the drive hoping that would help, but it made almost no difference.

The pc is a small form factor desktop so there isn't room in the case for a disk-in-a-box.

I will look at the small notebook drive option. I didn't know the older ide notebook drives could be put on a desktop. Hmm, I was also under the impression that older notebook drives could be pretty noisy as well.

Fred