Dampening Hard Drive Vibration

[Elcs]

When I bought my Samsung Spinpoint 400Gb HDD, I bought it for its quiet reputation.

A year and two cases down the line, I visit SPCR and find that yes, it is one of the quietest drives on this list but it also vibrates a lot....

Great, that reaffirms the fact that my HDD is driving me nuts with its whirring sound.

This drive was soft mounted in my Antec SLK3000B HDD cage and is now soft mounted in my CM Centurion 590 HDD cage but it is still making such a noise through vibration.

What do I turn to next?

 

[Marty502]

What do you mean by "soft mounted"? With dampening material between the HDD and the cage?

What I did to take my HDD seek noise down was to suspend it. You know, take some elastic cord, make sort of a "web" on the 5'25 cage, and slip the HDD there in a safely manner. There's some good instructions on this on the storage section of the SPCR forum. Be warned that the HDD will require more cooling because the cage transfers heat...

 

[RallyMaster]

Is it still the OOHHNNNN.....OHHHNNNN.....OHHHNNNN noise?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

for many years, I thought that groaning noise was a harbinger of bad things. Maybe because I had a noisy drive with that OHHHNNNN sound, and it went south shortly thereafter.

My "home-made" modded 1994 Compaq ProLiant-Server case has all the drives fitted with rubber shock-absorbers, and my new CM Stacker 830 comes with that feature. The Lian-Li EX-34 and EX-23 cages provide the same thing. there are a lot of approaches. I've seen some mods where that gray plastic foam used as packing material or cut to hold tools in a suitcase was fitted to hold the drives. Not good for cooling, although some provision was made for it in the project I saw on the web. That was about four years ago . . .

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: Marty502
What do you mean by "soft mounted"? With dampening material between the HDD and the cage?

What I did to take my HDD seek noise down was to suspend it. You know, take some elastic cord, make sort of a "web" on the 5'25 cage, and slip the HDD there in a safely manner. There's some good instructions on this on the storage section of the SPCR forum. Be warned that the HDD will require more cooling because the cage transfers heat...

Soft Mounted - mounted with anti-vibration mounts. ie. rubber grommets.

I saw a review from 2002 on SPCR of a commercial suspension kit. Looks nifty but I am not sure how to recreate it. I will take a look at

Originally posted by: RallyMaster
Is it still the OOHHNNNN.....OHHHNNNN.....OHHHNNNN noise?

Yes, yes it is!!!

My PC was making that noise when I went to sleep. When I woke up (now), it has stopped. My hard drive light is going like billy-o at the minute and no sign of thah OHHHHH-minous OOHHHNNN yet.

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Your best bet is to get some relatively inexpensive elastic bands or surgical tubing and fully suspend the drive inside a 5.25" bay. Will be the quietest possible.