Quieting HDs using RubberMaid Freezer Packs

nomoon · Post by **nomoon** » Thu Feb 25, 2010 12:56 pm

Iâ€™m finally getting around to posting photos of a project from several years ago.

In 2006, I used elastic bands to attach RubberMaid Blue Ice freezer packs to two of my WD 320GB (WD3200KS and a WD3200JD) hard drives. The drives were reasonably quiet, but had an idle whine that sounded like a high frequency white noise fan â€œwhoosh.â€

OddSilence · Post by **OddSilence** » Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:17 pm

Thanks.
Just wondering, if one was to make it like you did, but wanted to use several drives, I guess it wouldn't be a good idea to stack them one above the other without keeping a "drive slot" between each drive and the next drive's freezer pack, am I right?

nomoon · Post by **nomoon** » Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:32 pm

I agree. I would expect the drives to overheat if you did that. The bottom surface and the sides are the warmest part of the drives. The liquid does heat up after a while. The bags act as a muffler and a heat sink.

I don't have a photo, but I was only able to get two drives to fit comfortably in my 4 drive cage.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Fri Feb 26, 2010 1:36 pm

Several earlier threads about these gel-packs:

viewtopic.php?t=14586&highlight=

viewtopic.php?t=14418&highlight=

viewtopic.php?t=18459&highlight=

Post by **CA_Steve** » Fri Feb 26, 2010 2:01 pm

and it's great for when your drive has a sore back....

Over time I'd expect the plastic will degrade and leak...that'd be my primary concern.

nomoon · Post by **nomoon** » Thu Mar 18, 2010 6:29 pm

Ralf,

Thanks for the links for the historical record. I think that I saw those back in 2006 when I installed the gel packs, but couldn't recall or find them when I recently wrote up when I did.

CA_Steve, they've been installed for 4 years now without any leaking. The plastic is fairly durable. Having said that, it is something that I've thought about.