two seagate momentus sata drives in the lower hdd cage of antec p182

A P182 HD-cage "heavily" modified

PS. The pics are in the next post because .........."You must have 1 posts before you can post URL's/Links"

Sorry for the double post.

Why not put it on foam in the bottom HD section. Blu Tack or UHU White Tack on the corners (of the enclosure) to ensure it doesn't bump in to the sides and will also dampen vibrations if it's touching the sides.

WD 74GB Raptor and Seagate 7200.10 250GB
1.8mm Stretch Magic
Lian Li PC-A05B

I drilled out the rivets holding the six paired drive rails to the 3.5" drive cage to make room.

Version 1 as below used the rivet holes to pull the stretch magic through, but that left the lower drive suspended very close to the bottom of the cage, and once the cables got attached to the drive it was actually resting on the cage rather than suspended freely.


Version 2 as below uses the round ventilation or whatever holes in the cage, which leads to a nicer, more centered and spaced out arrangement of my two drives. I turned the two drives upside down so that I could more easily connect my SATA optical drive and two HDs with one power cable from my Corsair HX620 that has 3 SATA power plugs on it. It's still not ideal, however, because the PCIe graphics power plug from my 7900GTX interferes with the SATA power plug, keeping the drive from being truly freely suspended.

Heres my suspended drive, A seagate 60gb Barracuda IV (man is it quiet). The case is just a cheapie ATX case that i have modded with a 120mm front intake. I made the brackets and cut out the aluminum piece you see on the left side, then used some nice rubber gromets to run the stretch magic through so the stretch magic doesnt get cut by the sharp metal. This is my counterstrike / web / ftp / file server and i need it silent as its on 24/7 it also needs to be as quiet as possible so my dad doesnt find it cus then he will have me shut it down! (btw this case is your normal stand up atx case but i have it laying on its side)

sorry for the blurrieness



Btw the antec tri cool in front is at 5v with the switch at medium... it barly starts up, and is rubber mounted using Antec's silicon HD gromets, courtesy of Frys electronics display cases

Also just ordered a bunch of yate loon's to replace every fan in the thing... got some nice curved bladed 120mm lowspeed sleeve bearing ones comming from jabtech!

there are 2 +1 possible ways to avoid transfer of vibrations and/or noise of any vibrated source ; in our case HDDs.

first is rubber mounting or by springs for example.

the second way is by using a big mass. so an aluminum case, even handmade, like some pics i saw would be a good solution and also it could keep the drives cool enough.

the +1 way, and maybe the best, is a combination of the two above solutions. A big mass, like a heavy aluminum case with HDDs (working also as a big cooler for the drives), which will be hunged by rubbers or springs inside the PC case.

need some more time to provide pics, still working on it.

Can anyone tell me where I should look for these rounded clothing elastic?

As suggested on the "P150 Suspension" thread, I went to several fabric shops (ie. Fabricland, Singer) already here in Toronto, ON Canada and the only ones I can find are the flat ones. Those don't seem secure enough for me..

Other than fabric stores, are there any other kinds of stores that carry these things?

Ebay -

or use Stretch Magic instead?

EDIT BY ADMIN: EMBED LOOOOOONG URLS!!!!!!!!

And where can I find this Stretch Magic? Fabric store again?

My friend said the stuff he sees here are bungie cords, is that right?

Check ebay.ca for Stretch Magic - I've just done a search and it's available.

I bought some round elastic from a fabric shop and am not sure what the difference between that and the bungee cord is.

I took a gander at the stretch magic.. it looks a bit thin..

I'm not too sure about the bungee/shock cords either.. i hope they are fabric.. I'll find out at Home depot tomorrow.

But.. if anyone that lives in Canada knows where I can get this strangely common "rounded clothing elastic", please do share it!

jimmyzaas --

It's no mystery, it's FABRIC. Forget Home depot, you won't find it there. Just go to any fabric/sewing shop.

lol.. thx mike.. i'll give the fabric shops another go..

I've hit 3 more fabric shops and finally managed to find these rounded elastic. Bought 4 yards of the stuff.. only costed me 2 bucks.

However, I could only find 1/8" max like the original P150 o-rings. Is this sufficient? So that I won't have to be worried about it in a few years time?

Mike, you mentioned you used stuff half the thickness and that lasted 5 years? Was that 1/8th inch? Are you using 1/4th inch now?

1/8" is the thickest I've used. 1/4" does not exist afaik -- imagine that around your waits or wherever in clothing.... not too comfortable. I'm sure most of it is 2~4mm. The stuff is very, very difficult to break without taking some kind of cutting tool to it -- just try with your bare hands.

I've always had good luck going into outdoor/camping supply shops for shock cord or elastic cord. Tiso's in the UK will cut any length of cord you specify - I tend to buy 5m at a time for about £4.50.

I imagine camping shops in the US and Canada would probably stock this stuff too =).

Thanks mike for your quick answers. I'm glad my 2 bucks wasn't a total waste lol.

I will look into shock cords also. But for now, this clothing elastic looks the most suitable.

do the flat-type elastics would do for the Sonata 2 case? since i want to keep the hard disk where it's supposed to go.

i wonder if i do that "criss-cross" trick with the flat one too.

right now i use the flat-type elastics, but i think i used too much of it, it's not "stabilized" by the top part of the elastic, but only supported on the bottom, i've put 2 bath sponges at the bottom, only in case the drive would fall, it would land on a soft material and not far from it

i have used the 1.5mm diameter stretch magic on all my stuff, you wouldnt believe how strong the stuff is its probably got a tensil strength of round 125lbs

i can take a 6 inch piece of the stuff and stretch it a good 2ft its redicolous stuff dont let its size fool you! and the piece im playing with right now is probably a year old

What nd4spdbh sez above is right. I buy mine online at artbeads.com; they don't charge shipping (they put it in an envelope and mail it). Available in .5mm, 1.5mm, 1.8mm diameters. 1mm? I forget.

I bought mine from artbeads.com aswell.
This stuff is amazing.

I bought 10 rolls of 1.5mm because I thought that shipping to Denmark was too pricy for me to only order 1-2 rolls.

I have to say that litterally everybody is seriously impressed by this silly elastic string. I've done quite a few build for people using stretch magic now. First of people look scared when you show them the string thats holding their precious HDD's but when you hand over a piece for them to look at and pull a bit they usually say: "What the f***" og "What the hell"

Its seriously a very usable "tool" for quiet computing.

haha serious i said the same thing when i bought my first roll, got out to the parking lot opened it up and cut a foot off, then proceeded to try and snap it... only i couldnt haha crazy stuff im tellin ya.

I just spent $1.50 on round elastic at a fabric store and strung up two parallel webs where my HDD cage used to be. I attached some unused motherboard screws to the HDD, slid the HDD between the webs, and looped the peripheral strands of each web around the posts to hold the HDD in place both vertically and horizontally. The results?

I BELIEVE!

Holy cow does HDD suspension work. I can't hear a sound from my drive, no resonance throughout the case, no machine-gunning seeks, nothing. It is simply magical. I will throw up some pics soon. This is the cheapest, best thing one can do to silence their pc. Wow!

Here's my attempt, 5mm flat elastic, where it goes through holes it's in some clear tubing used in my aquarium to stop it getting damaged. I had to add a bracket to support one end of the drive and the loops on the drive are picture frame hanging brackets (for attaching to the picture itself).

Hey all

I just rigged up a suspension by drilling a few holes in the 3.5" drive cage in my p182 and stringing up some regular bungee cords from home depot. The drive isn't budging and with the 120mm scythe blowing on it, it's in the low 30s temp-wise.

Am I missing something with the bungee? Nobody seems to use it, but it worked beautifully for me and was easy to find. I'm just wondering if there's some drawback to it that I'm not seeing


-D

Hi, I use bungie cord in my Aopen Pentium M SFF case. Although I'm using a 2.5 HDD with a 2.5 - 3.5 HDD convertor the drive still caused a vibration sound to be heard. So I used a couple of lengths of bungie cord threaded through the CD/DVD rom bay and put the HDD in there. I don't plan to use a CD/DVD rom that much and when I do need to I plan to use a USB cd rom drive instead. The SFF main use is as a PVR and at present its virtually silent - apart from the CPU fan making some noise on start up which soon fades once everything as finished booting up.

But to answer the question, I think bungie cord is fine. But one thing I will advise everyone - make a regular check on the state of any suspension rig you use - whatever type of elastic too - heat does indeed take its toll on elastic.

One other thing I have been thinking of trying, is to mount a case fan under suspension - the aim again is to kill off any vibration sounds

You must have 1 posts before you can post URL's/Links.

nice rule) so it my 1st post.

and now my 2nd

Hi!
i made some simple thing from carbage of VortexVTX-COI-SL hard drive cooling system(super bad system dont buy this)





and now i have no vibration from my HDD at all. my case dont vibrates.
i have TT xaser3 aluminium.
so simple blocks of rubber do wonderful effect.

OK well heres my second contrib to the hd elastic suspension... i quite like this one, its in my HTPC. the 80mm fan is a yate loon lowspeed sleeve bearing running at 5v... its nice and silent...