For those looking to quiet those hard drives!

[MoFunk]

Kind of an interesting article. Look here. Any thoughts?

 

[jiffylube1024]

Well, first of all those are 4200 rpm drives, I'm not sure what kind of performance you'll get out of them. Second, I think that most of the newer 7200 rpm HD's are quite quiet, and the 5400 rpm ones don't seem to make a sound. Personally, I think notebook drives are wasted in desktop machines.

The CPU HSF is the source of loud noise in most computers, that's where I think I'd look first to get a quieter solution.

 

[Zap]

Is it just me, or does a single IBM GXP drive spank the RAID notebook drives according to their numbers? Well, except for temperatures, burst rate and CPU utilization (probably from Promise controller?).

Here's my solution for quiet drive subsystems that I've used in two machines: Use drives that are already quiet, and shock-mount them. I've used Maxtor 540X 5400RPM drives (really Quantum, 40GB platters for good performance) which are really quiet on their own. I've also used the 740X drives with the fluid bearings, 7200RPM 40GB platters and really quiet. To make these even more quiet, the "shock-mounting." I used some bits of neoprene between the drive and the sides of the drive bay. The neoprene pieces were purchased from All Electronics (they may or may not have any more) and are 3/4" circles, 1/8" thick with one side peel-off self-stick. I cut them into half-circles, and put a half-circle by each of the screws. My case has indented screw holes, making this easier, but it still was a PITA to get the drives into the bays because of the snug fit. Then, I screwed them in kinda finger tight. The drives aren't going anywhere because of the neoprene and the sides of the drives are about a millimeter away from the metal of the case. I'm thinking that this setup could be even quieter if I don't bother screwing in the drives at all, but nevertheless the power supply fan can be heard over the hard drives, so a "mute" point (pun intended).