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Silencing hard drive...

W

Worminater

Gawd
Joined
Apr 12, 2004
Messages
1,017
hey. I have an old dell optiplex gx1 sitting next to me that i recently moded a bit. It made a loud whine originally which i attributed to the old 10gb maxtor that was with it. Well; while asnding/puttyiong the case down; i put a newer 40gb maxtor from my old rig in; and this quieted the rig down noticeable; but it still whines. I think the general shape of the case just makes it whine...


Anyone have any suggestions for eliminating the noise? I have a small slow moving fan over the cpu hs (silent) and the psu makes no noise; and no case fans, so the only noise int he rig is the hard drive; and its honestly annoying me as such...

Suggestions..?
 
well; i bet its a virbration issue as its bolted to the frame of the computer. Gonna try spacing it with something rubbery and dampening, sounds like that would fix it. And i dont think i'm going to buy any real parts for a 450mhz dell...:) this is just my "sit in the corner and hum along happily box" i just want it to hum a little quieter hehe
 
Worminater said:
well; i bet its a virbration issue as its bolted to the frame of the computer. Gonna try spacing it with something rubbery and dampening, sounds like that would fix it. And i dont think i'm going to buy any real parts for a 450mhz dell...:) this is just my "sit in the corner and hum along happily box" i just want it to hum a little quieter hehe
Click to expand...

Like Worminater said, just a bit of dynamat should do the trick, not the whole inside of the case though ;)
 
I've tried silencing my drives...with mixed results. I use both Seagate and Samsungs. (overall, the Samsungs do spin quieter) I tried rubber and silicone spacers and mounts to isolate then from the case and discovered that the sound that I heard was the disk spinning up when an application was accessing the drive. I then tried several of the completely closed off HDD enclosures and silencers to get rid of the spin up noise and to silence them completely, including several expensive ones that cost around $70. Although they are made of thick aluminum plates and soundproofing mats, I did not find them to be successful in silencing, as you can still hear that high pitched sound. As disk speeds has increased beyond 5400rpm, I think it comes with the territory...

I did end up using one of the silencers in an Aspire SFF system where the case tended to resonate and amplify the HDD noise. It did eliminate the resonance. The silencers do make the HDD run hotter, so I'd recommend using a temperature sensor or monitoring software religiously to make sure that the drive isn't getting too hot. HDD life will probably decrease as well.

One option to consider would be using a notebook drive. They tend to run quieter.
 
I once saw a website where this guy had suspended his hard drives with rubber bands which completely eliminated all case vibrations because the hard drive was floating in the air and the rubber bands absorbed all of the vibrations. Sounds a little risky but definetly worth it if you truly want to achieve silence.

Or just get a Seagate drive. Your call.
 
i have a 30gb Maxtor Plus-something that has a serious whine problem as well. it's sitting on my shelf, holding my backup files. just in case. however, due to the noise, i don't run the thing either. i think it's a problem endemic (sp?) to the line at that time. afaik, these drives predate aam, too.

anyways, regarding your query:
if it's vibration noise, suspend it. but if it's motor whine, (i suspect it is given the model) the only way to solve it is to block off the noise*, but then you've got heat to worry about. if you're willing to do something custom**, i'd advocate birdhousing. Bluefront on SPCR did one up, the gallery is:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/yellownape100/detail?.dir=70c6&.dnm=2e6b.jpg&.src=ph

good luck!

*ok, one _could_ theoretically swap the motor out. i've never heard of it being done. if you can somehow convince uncle Max's techs to do it, i'd like an fdb in my plus30 as well. :p

**i got the impression that you weren't really interested in spending much money on this system, which eliminates the "just buy samsung" or "buy laptop hdd" answers.
 
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