SPCR

Suspending a hard drive to make it quieter is a great idea, but my cables are to short to reach my 5 1/4" bays. My Tyan Tiger MP mobo has its IDE connectors at the very bottom and the bays are to high for the cable to reach. Darn it.

I'd like to go up to a 24" cable, but I know that's out of spec for ATA100+. Should I worry about data integrity? Does anyone have any experience with 24" IDE Cables in mssion-critical settings?

If it's not a good idea to use longer cables what are my options? Anyone modded a SX1040 so that they can suspend a HD from the 3.5" bays at the bottome?

You're right, you should always use as short a cable as possible. Have you considered just placing your drive on a piece of foam in the bottom of the case? In many cases that's as quiet as suspending it.

depending if you move it around you could also try suspending the drive by hanging it by elastic from the lower 3.5" HD rack, which would also put it in a good place to be cooled by your intake fan(s).

PS ah just seen you mentioned this idea in your post - i dont think you need to do any modding? just tie the elastic to the HD cage?

As ChiefWeasel said, hanging it is another solution. And it can be done without modding your case. That's how I have my drive mounted. Although my case is obviously heavy modded, you could do it in a standard case too.



Rusty's Quiet In-Desk PC

They sell acrylic safety coating (plastic) in sheets. An 18x24 in sheet is ~$5.

You can cut it with a saw, score it with a razor and make a clean break, or cut it with scissors when it is heated. You can also bend form it or vacuum form it. Just turn your oven to 325 and put the plastic that you want to form on a baking sheet (non-stick is better). After a few minutes, it will go foggy. Pull it out with oven mits or work gloves and form away. If you are using a shaping mold, cover it in felt (20 cents for a decent sized sheet at a craft store) to keep it from sticking to metal. A wood form will work by itself. Model glue and super glue work fine with this stuff.

I created a of drive cages that I then affixed to the bottom of my case with 3M Dual-Lock (unisex velcro). I think that I'm going to try one more iteration of it, and then I'll post some pictures. Really, building your own from acrylic is a lot easier than I expected. I'm thinking of building a rack-case for my uATX server.

Thanks for the cool tips on the acrylic chaboud. I will have to play with that stuff. I think a clear case would be cool too, screw the RF. Pay attention to edge cooling of HD's though, you could get burnt with acrylic instead of metal.

What thickness do you buy, and where do you buy it? How thick could you actually work with? Safety coating for what? I want to try this stuff out, but will need to order in from big city to get it in small town.

Post some pics of your craft if you get a chance.

Wow, that's a wicked idea chaboud. I've tried suspending them from my 3.5" bays and it kinda works. My biggest problem right now is fitting the 2 hard drives (sandwiched and sidesinked) in my case. The combination of my case and mobo is making it really hard to suspend them....

I'm probably going to need to do some hacking to my case to make things fit. Bye bye hard drive cages!