My HD Suspension

[Splinter]

I finally retired the wooden case after nearly a year. I suspect it caused the death of my 120gb Maxtor drive.

After much research, I decided to pick up a Chenbro Xpider, and it seems pretty nice, and it gave me some room to finally try out hard drive suspension, and man oh man, silence never sounded so good.




The HD mounted on its side at the bottom has been changed slightly since I took that pic an hour ago, someone on the TR forums pointed out that it ran the chance of bumping into the front of the case. Since I wasnt using that 80mm fan anyway (noisy bugger that came with the case, even at 5v), I just took it out, so it's got a full inch of clearance between it and the grill now.

[Splinter]

BTW, I do realise that the elastic bands will become brittle and break over time.

I wanted to try it out with something cheap before I dropped $15 on bungee cord only to find out that it didnt make much of a difference.

I'll be replacing them after exams are over.

[sthayashi]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Stretch magic is the way to go. It's like $3 or so and you can string up a LOT of drives for what you get.

[Splinter]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Stretch magic is the way to go. It's like $3 or so and you can string up a LOT of drives for what you get.

Arts and crafts store maybe?

[sthayashi]

Pretty much. I got mine at Michael's, but if I had known about the location earlier, I would have gotten it from Pittsburgh's Knit & Bead shop (supporting local business)

[piotrgurin]

Isn't it important to keep the HD level?

Someone told me that if it isn't perfectly horizontal, it wears out alot faster.

[m0002a]

I have two IBM Deskstor drives that ran for 5 years without problem (just recently semi-retired) that were installed on their side in a vertical plane like the picture in this thread. The vertical installation was how the drvie cage is mounted in the 5 year old Gateway case for a PIII 866.

[Splinter]

Isn't it important to keep the HD level?

Someone told me that if it isn't perfectly horizontal, it wears out alot faster.

That was true about 10 years ago, but fluid bearing and such have eliminated this problem.

You can mount your HDs in any orientation you like, although I tend to keep them at square angles for aesthetics.

If you crack open most boxed PCs these days (HPs, Compaqs, Dells) you'll find that the HD is mounted vertically at the front of the case, to save on room.

[Ralf Hutter]

Isn't it important to keep the HD level?

Someone told me that if it isn't perfectly horizontal, it wears out alot faster.

That was true about 10 years ago, but fluid bearing and such have eliminated this problem.

You can mount your HDs in any orientation you like, although I tend to keep them at square angles for aesthetics.

I think piotrgurin is talking about mounting them at an angle other than 0°, 90°, etc.

If you crack open most boxed PCs these days (HPs, Compaqs, Dells) you'll find that the HD is mounted vertically at the front of the case, to save on room.

I doubt that this has anything to do with the newer FDB drives. OEMs have been mounting HDDs vertically for over 10 years now, it's nothing new.


-and to the original question, I've always been told not to mount an HDD at an angle too, but someone brought up an interesting point in another thread regarding those Apple computers with the HDD mounted directly on the LCD monitor itself. Obviously that can (and probably will) be run in a somewhat tilted orientation and yet Apple's engineers must not think that there's any issues with the HDD also running at an angle, otherwise they wouldn't have designed it like that. Anyone got any comments on that?

[Splinter]

Any angle is fine.

Look at iPods, laptops, etc

FDB does make a difference. The reason you didnt used to be able to mount at an angle was because the bearing would wear unevenly, that's not a problem anymore.

Older HDs had to be placed flat and right-side up because the heads were programmed with the locations of the tracks. Modern HDs intelligently seek them out, so they don't care about gravity.

[Splinter]

THat's my permanant suspension.

[andyb]

Splinter, what thread/elastic are you using.???

sthayashi sugested Stretch Magic, I have found it here in the UK, comes in 3 sizes 0.5mm, 0.7mm and 1.0mm, they are all the same cost of £6 for a 25m reel (sound like I should be able to get it for a lot less though).

That stuff must be pretty strong to hold a hard drive with only a few strands.!!!

Having never seen this stuff in person, does it stretch a lot??? does it stay springy for a long time??? do you have to replace it every 6 month or so??? does it help reduce seek noise at all or just spindle/motor noise.

I presume it's greatest claim to noise reduction would be that its soft mounted and doesnt make the case vibrate.

FYI this is for my new Samsung P120 200GB SATA, and my 7200.7 200GB PATA.

Andy

[Splinter]

I'm using 1.8mm stretch magic. A little test I did shows 2 strands can support 15 lbs.

I'm supporting 2 HDs (probably less than 2lbs) with four strands.

I've yet to notice any stretching or hardening, but it's only been running for 2 days this way.

I wouldnt expect any, since it's an entirely acrylic material, and they don't usually break down unless they're exposed to ultra-violet light.

[tmchow]

I am putting together a small case that currently has 3 x Seagate 300GB drives in it.

The drives will be connected to my main HTPC through external sata cables ultimatley to a RAID 5 PCI card.

WIth only 3 drives in my 5 drive case, the thing is vibrating like a mofo and it's annoying. If I touch the case with my palms the noise goes away, so it's definitely case vibration due to the HDs.

I was interested in a few products, such as the Nexus Disktwin (http://www.siliconacoustics.com/nexus-d ... black.html), but it's a pretty expensive solution for $20 for each drive.

I stumbled upon this thread in search for a cheaper solution and suspension seems the best and cheapest way to go, so I'm super excited.

However, what I'm worried about the hard drives slipping out frontwards or backwards. If you look at this pic:

Couldn't the HD slip out the front or back pretty easily if the case is moved?

This idea is neat:



But this isn't an option for me the way my case is constructed.

[Splinter]

THe case would have to get smashed pretty hard to slip the drives out, hard enough that it would wreck any hard-mounted drive.

As for transporting the case, it's probably best to remove the drives first.