Hard drive noise in Antec 300?

[hofffam]

I am thinking of buying an Antec 300 to use for my Windows Home Server system. It is inexpensive, has washable filters, and enough drive mounts.

But the hard drive mounts are straight-to-steel. This system could have 4-5 hard drives eventually.

Will this case produce a lot of hard drive noise? Is it possible to soft mount hard drives in this case?

[JamieG]

There is a limit how quiet you can make a system with large numbers of HDDs, but suspending them is the best way to make them quiet when in use. You can use power management features to spin down HDDs if they are not in use all the time - just be aware there may be some response time lag when you access the drive, as it will take a little time to spin up.

As for the Antec 300, you could try suspending your HDD's vertically in that drive cage - two HDDs would fit there. Then there is three spare optical bays for 3 more HDDs to be suspended horizontally in the usual fashion.

Here's a few examples that I could find in the HDD Suspension thread in the Silent Storage sub-forum:

Antec Titan HD Suspension

6mm Shock cord
1/4 washer
1/2 washer
superglue to keep washers from sliding


Cable ties between drives and cage


Close up shot


2 x L1A @ 5v for cooling

Thanks to everyone for all the inspiration in this thread!

I rigged up a suspended drive in an Antec 300 case. The drive bays aren’t wide enough to keep the drive horizontal, so I oriented it vertically. I only expect to ever need one drive anyway. I used good old StretchMagic.

It was difficult to tie the knots under tension, i.e. after feeding the cord through the slots. So instead I borrowed an idea from a few pages back. I cut off a double length of StretchMagic and tied it up before installing it, then fed the doubled cord through the slots and holes. To prevent the ends from slipping back through again, they loop around some short lengths of aluminum rod. Wooden dowels or bits of a pencil would work just as well.



(bigger pic here)

As expected, an amazing difference in sound. While transferring data to the new system, I had a second drive mounted in the traditional manner. It was sooo much louder.

My servers new hd suspension.... stretch magic FTW!

(Apologies for re-posting large pictures).

If you don't like that idea, look at something like the Coolermaster 590 - remove all the fan grill/HDD cage combos and suspend all your drives in the front of the case. Just seal up some of the fan grills in the sides and maybe the top as well.

[walle]

/removed. JamieG beat me to it.

[hofffam]

Thanks. I don't think vertical suspension will work for me because I will need more drives than I can fit with a vertical orientation. I would be happy with a rubber grommet type of mounting - except the drive cage on that case doesn't have the extra width for them (just 1/8 of an inch!).

[walle]

width increased with 20mm leaving ~30mm on the opposite side.


Edit.
This was taken during a build I did for a friend of mine last year. I always take pictures, I like the process, unfortunately though, and for reasons I can no longer remember, I decided to burn the pictures onto a DVD and afterwards erase them from the hard drive. This was the only pic to survive, the DVD I managed to misplace shortly after, yeah, well…

Anyway,
What I wanted to show was that it's very simple to modify the drive cage (increasing the width) doing so would allow for grommets to be used.