Anyways, the goals were
- decouple the HDD and
- swap the fan for a 92mm Nexus.
Here is the HDD mounted on 1/2-inch Sorbothane blocks cut from a 4x4in sheet from McMasters. It is so sticky I doubt I need the elastic to keep it there, but it can't hurt. The Sorbothane provides plenty of decoupling.
Here is the 92mm Nexus mounted on the top (upside down), along with the Fanmate on the back. I wasn't sure how fast I was going to want to run it. Once I know, I may remove the Fanmate and set up a fixed voltage with diodes etc.
Note that I removed the rear 60mm fan. I am hoping with my Nexus placement that I will get cool air in that grill, over some PSU components, and then out the Nexus. If I don't think it is working, I may add some kind of a barrier wall to block the direct path from grill to Nexus, or maybe add some holes on the side and block the rear grill.
Finally, the finished product:
The results? It is definitely quieter.
I can still hear the fan from about a meter, maybe more. None of my sleeve-bearing fans are particularly quiet when exhausting up. That must be their noisest direction? The Nexus is virtually silent at 5V placed in other orientations.
The seek noise is disappointing. While I think the decoupling helped, I think that the drive itself produces so much seek noise that is still audible from 5-10ft. It is definitely reduced compared to being hard mounted, but I expected better, but then I was expecting it to have a SpinPoint. Silly me. I did enable AAM while I had the drive out.
Eventually, I'll swap the 40GB WD for an 80GB SP or maybe even a notebook drive. 5400rpm is all that is needed for Tivos anyways.