attempt to silence my DirecTiVo

ilh · Post by **ilh** » Sun May 01, 2005 7:18 am

Inspired by Pauli's silencing of his DirecTivo, I made a similar attempt. Mine is a Samsung, and it was loud. You could hear the 60mm fan droning on and the HDD seeking from at least 10-15ft away, even when it was "off." I say "off," because a Tivo is never really off. It is always recording off the two tuners onto the disk so you always have your last 30 minutes available.

Anyways, the goals were

decouple the HDD and
swap the fan for a 92mm Nexus.

Upon opening it up, I was quite surprised to not find a Samsung drive inside a Samsung unit and also to find a 7200rpm drive rather than a 5400rpm drive. It has a WD400LB. No wonder its seeks are so loud. I am now wondering if decoupling is going to be enough.

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.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Sun May 01, 2005 10:30 am

ilh- nice work (looks alot better than mine

).

Anyway, about the seek noise, try removing the elastic band from around the drive. I believe that compressing the Sorbothane causes it to lose its vibration dampening properties. Perhaps Ralf can confirm.

Also, version 6.2 of the Tivo software also seems to have reduced the amount of harddrive accesses. It has only been upgraded in Southern CA sites up to this point, though.

ilh · Post by **ilh** » Sun May 01, 2005 11:49 am

Thanks. The wonderous U-channel edge trim hides all! Seriously though, I must have spiraled out 1/8-inch at a time. It took forever but turned out nicely though. Lots of bonding time for me with my Wiss tin snips.

My elastic is so loose, I seriously doubt it is hurting. My sorbothane is only compressed from the weight of the drive. Good thinking though. I think any remaining seek noise is simply coming from the drive itself.

Where are you reading the software version? I think mine is running 3.1.1e according to System Information. 6.2 sounds like a big difference from mine.

BenW · Post by **BenW** » Sun May 01, 2005 2:50 pm

Why didn't you put a 120mm fan in there?

ilh · Post by **ilh** » Sun May 01, 2005 6:37 pm

I had the 92mm Nexus and I figured it was already a lot bigger than the 60mm that was there. The only 120mm fans I had on hand were three D12SM-12s that even undervolted were noisier than the Nexus 92mm. Their bearing noise was worse in the blowing up orientation.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Mon May 02, 2005 5:44 am

ilh wrote:I had the 92mm Nexus and I figured it was already a lot bigger than the 60mm that was there. The only 120mm fans I had on hand were three D12SM-12s that even undervolted were noisier than the Nexus 92mm. Their bearing noise was worse in the blowing up orientation.

Good job on the Tivo, and good thinking on the fan situation. I suspect you've gone as far as you can without changing out the HDD.

nomoon · Post by **nomoon** » Mon May 02, 2005 7:12 am

Ralf Hutter wrote:Good job on the Tivo, and good thinking on the fan situation. I suspect you've gone as far as you can without changing out the HDD.

The hard drive can be replaced too! I replaced my 40 GB drive with a really quiet Seagate 120 GB drive. I don't remember which model, but it was an early FSB model. There are various DIY FAQs out there to show you how to do it yourself. I was able to copy all of my settings and previously recorded shows to the new drive using a Linux utility that I downloaded.... and I'm NOT a Linux person:)

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/index.php
http://www.weaknees.com/

Jason

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Mon May 02, 2005 7:50 am

Also, the new 6.2 version of the Tivo software supports large hard drives (> 137GB), so you can now have a DTivo with huge capacity. Of course, you'll never have enough time to watch all those shows!

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Mon May 02, 2005 10:08 am

ilh wrote:Where are you reading the software version? I think mine is running 3.1.1e according to System Information. 6.2 sounds like a big difference from mine.

The software version has jumped from 3.1.1e to 6.2. Outside of SoCal, the update should happen this month. The new version has folders and menu operations are MUCH faster. Plus, it has support for larger drives.

ilh · Post by **ilh** » Mon May 02, 2005 10:34 am

That's great to hear. I couldn't believe it when I discovered the recorded shows were just kept in one big chronologically ordered list. I have longed for some way of organizing them.