How can I make my Western Digital 640gb hard drives quieter?

[Mysteriouskk]

They are the loudest part in my system.

Are hard drive silencers good to use?

 

[Denithor]

Seriously, the loudest part in your system? I'm jealous...

Whatever you do, don't restrict airflow around the drives - you don't want them overheating (unlikely with these newer drives, but you never know).

 

[Fallengod]

Find it hard to believe they are the loudest part in your system. Wtf? Do you have them sitting up against the case metal or something?


My raptor and wd 640 black are not even noticeable over my cpu and video card fan.....

 

[Binky]

Active hard drive silencers are just an enclosure that goes inside your case. They add another component that might fail, however (they have fans). You could also use external esata enclosures like the Antec MX-1.

You can suspend them if they are transmitting sound through vibrations into the case (google hard drive suspension). You could also dismount them and let them sit on something that absorbs vibration, like a block of foam. Be aware though, some heat is removed from the drives through the case, and they tend to get hotter when suspeded or sitting since they are not in metal-to-metal contact with the case.

 

[Mysteriouskk]

I'm trying to make my machine as quiet as possible. I do have a P180B, which is already pretty quiet, and a Noctua cpu heatsink. What I found was that the HDDs and Gfx card fan were the most noisy.

I just bought a Tunix Sanctum, which looks like it will be what I'm looking for.

Do you think it might make the drives overheat or fail?

 

[Binky]

Just watch the temps with the Tuniq. Start worrying about anything consistently above 50c and make adjustments if needed.

See page 6.
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

 

[VirtualLarry]

WD 6400AAKS HDs noisy? What are you smoking. You must not have a GPU fan and a CPU fan or something.

 

[error8]

Exactly. My 640AAKS is totally silent. It does not generate any sound whatsoever. There must be something else that makes noise in your system.