PC without HD

[ghidu]

I'm thinking about tossing away the HD (because of the noise) from the PC that seats in my bedroom and replace it with a PCI card reader and a 4G flash card. It's less expensive than i-Ram and more secure - I don't know about speed.
My question is if any of you tried this method or maybe something else?

 

[Ika]

Are you looking for an entirely silent computer? It depends on what the computer's going to be used for, really.

 

[lamere]

No, and good luck with that. Try it and let us know how it works out.

 

[broly8877]

My WD HDDs are borderline inaudible.

Get new HDDs? They've gone a long way, my Maxtors (6 year old now), were damn noisy from day 1.

 

[Gondola71]

If you use a flash card for swap and you run any version of Windows, you're going to eat that flash up pretty quickly.

Since hard drives are internal, most cases should almost completely muffle their noise.

 

[bfonnes]

Originally posted by: ghidu
I'm thinking about tossing away the HD (because of the noise) from the PC that seats in my bedroom and replace it with a PCI card reader and a 4G flash card. It's less expensive than i-Ram and more secure - I don't know about speed.
My question is if any of you tried this method or maybe something else?

The best way to have a system without a HDD is some sort of wireless access point, or I suppose it could be wired as well, but, I'm not a network engineer and cannot suggest how to do this. You could try the Networking forum. I suppose someone there would know.

BFonnes

 

[jgigz]

I read an interesting article in Maximum PC that had a how to on hdd noise dampening. Pretty much what you do is you suspend the HDD in a 5.25 drive bay with rubberbands. Unfortunately i cannot find the article

 

[Gondola71]

Originally posted by: jgigz
I read an interesting article in Maximum PC that had a how to on hdd noise dampening. Pretty much what you do is you suspend the HDD in a 5.25 drive bay with rubberbands. Unfortunately i cannot find the article

Sounds like a marketing opportunity for someone willing to come up with a professional HDD mount like this.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: ghidu
I'm thinking about tossing away the HD (because of the noise) from the PC that seats in my bedroom and replace it with a PCI card reader and a 4G flash card. It's less expensive than i-Ram and more secure - I don't know about speed.
My question is if any of you tried this method or maybe something else?

BartPE probably doesn't require a local hard drive (haven't actually tried....) and gives access to Firefox, DVD burning apps, and a mountain of utilities that are supported with plug-ins, but it's not what I'd call full-fledged Windows by any stretch of the imagination

Windows XPe (embedded) is available, but is aimed at vendors, not end users

Windows XP For Legacy Clients is based on XPe and has PnP and a few dozen other buzzwords and is intended for MS's corporate clients. However, aside from a terminal server client and a web browser, it can't do much.

Both BartPE and XPe/XPforLC have a terminal server client (remote desktop) available, so if you have another computer in another room, you could always remote desktop into it - that would let you have a dead-silent machine in one room and a "full" computer (noisier) in another.

But Core2 should remove some of the need for at least some fans; that might help with overall noise as well.

 

[WobbleWobble]

Originally posted by: Gondola71

Originally posted by: jgigz
I read an interesting article in Maximum PC that had a how to on hdd noise dampening. Pretty much what you do is you suspend the HDD in a 5.25 drive bay with rubberbands. Unfortunately i cannot find the article

Sounds like a marketing opportunity for someone willing to come up with a professional HDD mount like this.

They already do - NoVibes III

Or if you want to do it yourself you can follow this SilentPCReview guide.

 

[Nocturnal]

Look in to a case like the P150. It has that hard drive noise dampening enclosure or housing that you kinda hang your drives on to. From what I understand it works pretty good too.

 

[ghidu]

thank you all for the ideas, they're all great.
Gondola71 you're right, I was thinking the same about the "short life" of the flash card.
I don't want any HD, the whining noise is killing me. And I'm sure in 1-2 years, maybe sooner, a new one will start to do the same thing.
bfonnes, I thought about that too and I do have a PC in another room that runs almost 24/7.
Aflac, I'm not using it that much, my wife does. She's a student and she uses it for internet and word processing. I would like to remove every fan and use a pasive or a water cooling solution. The PC is a P4 Northwood at 2.4Ghz, not overclocked, 512MB RAM RDRAM and a nVidia video card that already has a pasive cooler: Zalman ZM80D-HP.
Nocturnal, it's not the read\write noises that bother me, but the whining.