Advice needed on how to make hard drives more quiet

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Allsorts

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The soundproofing material I'm using in my case does a good job of absorbing the higher frequencies but leaves a lot of the lower ones. The worst offenders are my DDC pump and two hard drives. I know how to tackle the pump noise but I'm not too sure about reducing hard drive noise :eh:.

I have two WD hard drives, a 74GB Raptor and a plain vanilla 250GB one. The intermittent seek noises don't bother me that much, it's more the low throbbing hum (that I'm sure comes from the spindle/motor) that I want to get rid of.

I'm really interested to hear what you guys do to reduce noise from your hard drives. I've read a couple of interesting articles over at SPCR about using elastic suspensions, foam sandwiches and other mad stuff. Anyone tried these methods?
 
Not something I`ve thought about, hard drive noise - in terms of quietening them.

Maybe it`s the pshycie, but I almost listen to them rather than consider them an annoyance - listening out for things they`re doing, it maybe weird but I can usually tell when a drive has a head problem from it. pffft been in this game too long >.<

However, I would think that apart from problematic noises, the regular noises of a drive tend to be amplified by the likes of their cages and casings - this is where those dampner tabs come in, to lessen the vibration from the drive to their housing.

Beyond that there`s packing the drive up - something I`d not condone without serious consideration given to cooling the unit, perhaps via a heatsink that comes out of the packing.

Either way, be very careful with temps with whatever method u go ahead with.
 
theres the rubber holders which i think rast is talking about, then theres the actual hard drive enclosers, that you put in the 5 1/2 bays. Not sure how good they are.
 
What kemp said tbh. The P180 i has has a slightly more advance way of mounting in little rubber eyelets that go into the sides of the caddy, screw goes through that into the hdd, so theres no metal on metal anywhere. Shut my raptor right up:p.

youd have too mod your bays to incorporate that kinda thing though, so the O ring would be easyer.
 
I've got a Zalman cooler that decouples the drive from the metal cage - really helped with noise reduction.

I really reduced HDD activity when I turned off indexing a week ago. Don't know how it got turned on in the first place.

Drive is quieter, cooler and unless I'm imagining it, performance is up a bit.
 
Thanks for all the comments guys. :beerchug: I've been bitten by the 'noise bug' now LOL. I suppose it's like overclocking, except you're trying to squeeze out every last dB instead of MHz :).

I actually use little silica gel washers (o-rings) on everything, although only between screws and the case. Seems a bit tricky but I'll try to put some in between the case and the HDD as well and see what happens.

I do have a couple of HDD enclosures which were great for cooling in my old case but they have little fans in them that might make the noise worse :D. Worth a try though, i can always disconnect those fans.

Mmm lots to think about. If all else fails I might try something a little more eccentric, à la SPCR.
 
Hmmmm, if u really wanted to be a pshyco-mod-type-fiend, u could figure out a way to submerse u`r harddrive in a 5.25 bay resevoir.

Not the most practicle way to do things perhaps, but if the water was in a loop somehow, that`d help the temps - but the trickiest thing would be what to skin the drive with that would disopate heat and be water-tight...

....

..
 
raptors are noisy... any drive at 10K is going to be loud. You could try suspending them with rubber bands that works for some. Also try strengthening your case with internal struts and this will cause the case to transmit less of that irritating reverberated sound.

my p180b case works really really well at deadending the harddrive sound.
 
I've been pretty busy recently but have finally made some progress. :) After searching around I found a few people saying that the low modulating hum from hard drives mounted directly to the case is due to 'beating'. Apparently the best way to reduce this noise is to mechanically decouple the drives from the case.

Elastic suspension seems to be the most effective way of dampening hard drive vibrations, so I bought some Stretch Magic cord and threaded this through the slits in my HDD cage. The cord is really stretchy so I attached about ten lengths to support the weight of the drive.



Twisting two adjacent cords together at both ends and pushing the hard drive through helps keep it in place. I was a bit worried about how much the hard drive temperatures shot up because their sides are no longer in contact with the case, so I stuck some small heatsinks on the sides.



When I turned the computer on I noticed the difference in sound right away, the low modulating hum is now completely gone. :D The AK47 seek noises of the Raptor now sound like a very far away AK47 and the 250GB drive is now barely audible. Drive temperatures are up by about 6°C but they are nowhere near dangerously hot.

Not a bad result for a few bucks lol.
 
name='Allsorts' said:
I've been pretty busy recently but have finally made some progress. :) After searching around I found a few people saying that the low modulating hum from hard drives mounted directly to the case is due to 'beating'. Apparently the best way to reduce this noise is to mechanically decouple the drives from the case.

Elastic suspension seems to be the most effective way of dampening hard drive vibrations, so I bought some Stretch Magic cord and threaded this through the slits in my HDD cage. The cord is really stretchy so I attached about ten lengths to support the weight of the drive.



Twisting two adjacent cords together at both ends and pushing the hard drive through helps keep it in place. I was a bit worried about how much the hard drive temperatures shot up because their sides are no longer in contact with the case, so I stuck some small heatsinks on the sides.



When I turned the computer on I noticed the difference in sound right away, the low modulating hum is now completely gone. :D The AK47 seek noises of the Raptor now sound like a very far away AK47 and the 250GB drive is now barely audible. Drive temperatures are up by about 6°C but they are nowhere near dangerously hot.

Not a bad result for a few bucks lol.
Click to expand...

What temps are they running at ?

oh and order me 4 of those drive cages please!
 
@jiffz: Thanks mate. Heavy read/write bursts from my raptor used to vibrate my case quite a bit, OK I was exaggerating about the AK but it's by far the noisest drive I've owned. :)

@Rastalovich: MBM5 says the raptor is running at 31°C and the 250GB at 52°C (both idle). However, the 250GB drive is a WD2500KS model which has a notorious temperature sensor and mine has always read 20°C too high. The HDD cage sits in front of an intake fan anyway so the drives won't get too toasty.
 
30 or so is tremendous, and if the project has given u the noise deduction u were after, I`d say it`s a job well done :)

But seriously, get me some of those cages lol
 
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