Silencing a Hard Drive Using Household Items

Reader Justblair recommends his blog entry detailing how he made a hard drive silencer for a pittance. "This article demonstrates a very easy-to-make hard drive silencer that not only outperforms most commercially available devices, but is cheaper to implement as well. Requiring very little in fabrication skills, it is an ideal addition to a media PC or HTPC. It may even suit you if your head is aching after many hours of being whined at by your hard drive."

Solution

[NXprime]

Or you could just buy some newer hard drives out there with high ariel density. WD 640GB AAKS model & 1TB drives are practically dead silent. That or buy some SSD's. Really this noise issue is beginning to lose importance these days and that's the point I'm trying to make here.

cooling pads + box

[lobiusmoop]

I'm not sure that the 'cooling pads plus box' enclosure is a good idea. It looks like it will make the drive less efficient at radiating heat away. Might lead to overheating, especially in the fanless system in the article.

Re:Maybe it's just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally, people who can hear the high-pitched whine of a TV or the whine of transformers can also hear hard drives whine and find all the whining noise annoying. People going deaf won't know what the hell I am talking about.

Re:cooling pads + box

[karstux]

TFA claims that the gel would transfer the heat to the aluminum enclosure where it could radiate away, but I'm not so sure of that. Doesn't it store the heat more than transfer it?

However, I suppose you could combine this technique with a watercooling system. Just wind some copper tubing around the HDD a few times and lead it to the outside of the enclosure.

Re:RTA, he does suspend them.

[TheLink]

Embedding in gel looked like a pretty bad idea.

Hard drives get pretty hot, and high temperatures will shorten their lifespan.

My seagate drives are quiet enough for me.

Only stuff that makes perceptible noise are the case fans, and the ones I have aren't that noisy either.

Re:i have never found hard drive noise a problem

[pipatron]

the fans are the noisiest part of my computer

Now see what happens when you silence the fan, like you would in any silent computer that this article is meant to be used for

Common Household Items?

[methano]

Since when is a "188x119x55mm Alu alloy Hammond enclosure," a common household item?

Re:i have never found hard drive noise a problem

[Cylix]

Larger slower fans are pretty much the key for noise to displacement ratio.

I've been fairly happy with my antec case which even incluedes a very very large fan at the top of the case.

My only complaint is these fans are managed via switch attached to each fan. Sure, I never have to turn them up, but let the board regulate the flow would be better.

Re:The catch is

[evilviper]

Hard drives are designed for air cooling, not conduction.

I wouldn't say that at all. HDDs aren't designed to be completely conduction cooled, but the conduction part of it is, actually, quite important. My HDD certainly saw a serious temperature increase when I suspension mounted it, even though airflow wasn't affected.

That was fairly easy to resolve by aiming the nearest fan more directly at it, rather than only slight incidental/perpendicular airflow.

Suspension mounting, in combination with setting acoustic management (see hdparm) made the hard drive damn near completely silent, and it isn't going to die in less than a year due to the lack of airflow.

That's why those little circuit boards are exposed on the outside of the drive.

The vast majority of the heat generated by a HDD, however, is from the motor, and that most certainly is bound directly to the drive body, where the heat can be conducted away quite easily by contact with the steel case. That can make the difference between overheating, or not.

Re:i have never found hard drive noise a problem

[sbeckstead]

I find the key to keeping fan noise down is to wear noise canceling headphones and turn the pocket radio up slightly. Voila no fan noise and I can watch the game with a nice commentary to boot. This even works to quiet wife noise and kid noise. No messy gels involved.