Drive suspension by cable-tie chains and elastic

Maderlock · Post by **Maderlock** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 7:25 am

This is a useful technique if you are cheap like me, but don't have 5 1/4" bays free for suspension, or you want to use the standard ATX airflow to cool your drives.

Essentially, I'm using the standard elastic suspension, but these are attached at the side to chains of cable-ties. One nice advantage to this approach is that depending on your space and number of drives, you can adjust the gaps between cable-ties and thus relative positioning of your drives.

Having not seen this variation before (though the forums are pretty big so I may have missed it), I thought I'd share a quick description and pictures. Here's the finished product and how it fits in the rest of the case (hmm, not completely flat yet )

I'm suspending 2xWD Caviar SE250Gb drives.

Equipment:
- Some cable-ties (I used 8 medium <6"x1/4"> and 24 small <4"x1/8">)
- Sewing elastic (See other threads for types good for suspension)

Total Cost: About Â£1.50

Approach:
- First, I removed the 3 1/2" panels below the 5 1/4" bays. In my cheap-arse case this involved using pliers and brute-force to remove some rivets.
- To create equally spaced anchors, I thread some of the small cable-ties through pairs of holes in the bottom of the case and under the 5 1/4" bay (you may need to drill these).
- To make the chains, I start with medium cable ties top and bottom, which allow for easy adjustment of the tension of the whole chain. These thread through the anchors.
- The rest of the chains are made up of the smaller cable-ties, like a paper-chain. Make an effort to tighten each quadruplet of ties the same amount (those that are the same colour in the photos)
- Tighten incrementally so that each chain has similar tension and positioning of individual elements.
- Thread and tie sewing elastic through the cable ties and insert HDs.

->

Caveat: As I was mostly using the old holes for the 3 1/2" bay, the chains were too close together and the drives touched the chains. I made more of a gap with cardboard rolls, that do not touch the drives. This is a stop-gap measure as I think it will adversely reduce air-flow. Better to make a larger space between the chains.

You may also notice that there is a lot of slack in the elastic. This is on purpose to make a loose suspension that will transmit as little of the drive vibrations as possible.

Thanks SPCR for the suspension idea in the first place. It makes a huge amount of difference. No transmitted vibrations. Success (and on the cheap)!

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 7:14 pm

Man... Toilet paper rolls used to suspend the drives. Now I've seen everything.

aidanjm2004 · Post by **aidanjm2004** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 9:38 pm

Very nice job. Neat case, too. Everything looks so tidy.

Maderlock · Post by **Maderlock** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 12:30 am

Wel, they're cling-film rolls, but yeah...

Yes, it looks neat atm. Not sure that insulation tape will be strong enough to hold those wires for ever though

Fat_bloater_dave · Post by **Fat_bloater_dave** » Mon May 01, 2006 8:05 am

Nothing to do with the suspention but man those pictures are realy nice quality what camra do you use?

Maderlock · Post by **Maderlock** » Mon May 01, 2006 2:23 pm

That's a Canon 350D (or Digital Rebel XT summat in the US?) with the stock 18-55mm lens. A very nice, if quite pricey bit of kit. I will admit to a little post-sharpening in Photoshop.

Update to suspension: I've now also suspended those SATA cables. They're very stiff and were transmitting vibrations to the case.

Sendorm · Post by **Sendorm** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 3:10 am

actually all those information is avaliable in the jpeg file itself.
Even the use of photoshop is indicated :)

Canon eos 350d with photoshop 7.0 was used.
Exposure time was 40ms with F=4 , yada yada etc.

wwenze · Post by **wwenze** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 2:21 am

I thought I should share the way I did it:

2 pieces of elastic, nothing else. Do note that this is an old pic, I've managed to let the hdd rest parallel to the ground now.

Reason for this is the lack of space, plus I thought suspending with too much tension still results in vibrations transmitted onto the chassis, hanging should reduce that even further.