2.5" enclosures for a 3.5" bay?

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 12:54 am

G'day all,

Since my HDD is now the only thing making any noise in my fanless system, I've bought my first notebook 2.5" hard drive (Toshiba MK4025GAS, seems to be the quietest thing out there). I'm amazed at how small it really is, and have found myself wondering if it would fit inside a small enclosure in a 3.5" bay? Picture a mini-Smartdrive 2002C with screw holes in the side to secure it into a normal PC HDD bay.

Has anyone heard of such a product? I know that 2.5 to 3.5 adaptors are readily available but none would do anything to reduce noise or vibration.

El Doug · Post by **El Doug** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 1:05 am

you could always suspend it

ultimate bragging rights for suspended 2.5'', plus it would cost peanuts for basic elastic string

zhenya · Post by **zhenya** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 5:12 am

Purchasing an enclosure is probably not necessary. Part of the reason SPCR'ers like 2.5" drives so much is that their power consumption is very low - hence they create very little heat. That means you would likely be safe wrapping it in foam/bubble wrap or whatever is your insulation of choice, and make it inaudible for next to nothing.

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 6:54 am

I briefly tried homebrewing such an enclosure, with the idea that I'd sell them on SPCR. The initial results I was getting were not promising. By my standards, the noise reduction wasn't sufficient within a 3.5" form factor. The homebrew enclosure I've come up with for myself is about the size of a large 5.25" optical drive. Even then, I'd rather have something with better noise reduction.

I think a common solution here is to use a 5.25" sized Smartdrive enclosure, which tends to cook the 3.5" hard drives it was intended for but which is perfectly fine with 2.5" drives. I homebrew my enclosures because it's less expensive and I'm cheap.

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 7:19 am

IsaacKuo wrote:I briefly tried homebrewing such an enclosure, with the idea that I'd sell them on SPCR. The initial results I was getting were not promising. By my standards, the noise reduction wasn't sufficient within a 3.5" form factor. The homebrew enclosure I've come up with for myself is about the size of a large 5.25" optical drive. Even then, I'd rather have something with better noise reduction.

I think a common solution here is to use a 5.25" sized Smartdrive enclosure, which tends to cook the 3.5" hard drives it was intended for but which is perfectly fine with 2.5" drives. I homebrew my enclosures because it's less expensive and I'm cheap.

I'm also toying with the idea of using a 7200RPM 2.5" drive in a 5.25" DYI enclosure (if only they weren't so freaking expensive, especially the SATA ones). I kind of hoped that if I use two containers with a layer of foam in between and suspension system it would be completely inaudible and I'd have to worry only about my fans. You say you could still hear the drives? How did you design your enclosures, was it something elaborate or just a plain box?

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 9:15 am

I posted a how-to on my homebrew PSP enclosure:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=22839

My standards for acceptable noise levels are extreme even by SPCR standards. I know there are many here who are satisfied with the noise level of a suspended 2.5" hard drive (low noise model, of course). I am not.

With my Western Digital Scorpio, sandwiching between two blocks of foam simply wasn't good enough. A full enclosure was required to acheive sufficient noise reduction. The important thing is to have sound damping material all around and then a full enclosure around that. This way, noise will bounce around inside the enclosure passing through the damping material many times. Without such an enclosure, the noise passes through the damping material only once before escaping.

But don't take my word for it. Try it out! You may find even a single pass through a foam sandwich is enough for you.

Imvd85 · Post by **Imvd85** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 10:23 am

Yeah, I need an enclosure-muffler specifically designed for 2.5'' drives too.
The drive enclosures from gup.co.jp ,Nexus and Scythe occupy too much space and they don't fit into 3.5'' bays of course.
I wish a product like that with high noise-reduction qualities would be produced.