soft mount vs. performance

trxman · Post by **trxman** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 5:43 pm

is there some seek or/and other performance penalty of soft (elastic) mounting 2.5" and 3.5" drives like described here:

viewtopic.php?t=8240

tehfire · Post by **tehfire** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 6:07 pm

Not that I'm aware of...

I wish I had some cool explination, but unless the HD was really bouncing around I don't see how soft-mounting would affect its performance.

trxman · Post by **trxman** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 6:28 pm

well, I've found this article:

http://www.ixbt.com/storage/wdscorpio120.shtml

and there are some tests done with 'WD1200BEVS' and 'WD1200BEVS freelaying' and the results are not the same.

that made me wonder if soft mounting enables drive to shake because of head movement and make heads less acurate while seeking... just a guess...

continuum · Post by **continuum** » Sun Jul 01, 2007 1:58 pm

Seagate has some white papers on this-- soft mounting, at least on older drives (the white paper is fairly old) showed a noticeable worsening of access times, but if you seek silence, it's probably worth the trade-off.

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/ ... rives.html

cmthomson · Post by **cmthomson** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 5:23 pm

This would depend on the firmware in the drive.

The amount of overshoot/undershoot during seeks will clearly change when a drive is soft mounted. If the firmware is tuned for a hard mounting configuration (ie, a particular overall drive inertia), then soft mounting will cause more seeks to miss their target tracks, requiring secondary corrective seeks.

Now it stands to reason that the firmware would have heuristics built in for this, to deal not only with hard/soft mounting, and individual drive variation, but also with vertical vs horizontal mounting.

But only the design engineers know for sure, and all this stuff is Trade Secret...

derekchinese · Post by **derekchinese** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 10:16 pm

one person once explained to me that the drives are spinning so fast as it is and with so many g forces that adding just a little extra movement is relatively insignificant. The drive is meant to spin at 7200RPM--very fast and with a lot of force. With sturdy soft mounting, the additional forces from the drive being allowed to move freely should be quite insignificant.

well it turns out I guess I will have to take all of the back. After translating that article to english, it turns out that performance takes a small hit from freelaying on a table

Here is the translated article: Admin edit'd for wide url

HOWEVER, like it has been mentioned already, it is probably worth the performance hit in the name of silence! after all, we could overclock our systems even further if we were not aiming for silence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 12:29 am

another good reason to switch to 2.5" drives. less vibration from the drive (virtually none) will mean virtually no performance hit. I wonder if the performance hit on softmounted 3.5" drives ends up making them as slow or slower than 2.5" drives.. That would be interesting to see.

mad_man · Post by **mad_man** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:46 am

Aris wrote:another good reason to switch to 2.5" drives. less vibration from the drive (virtually none) will mean virtually no performance hit. I wonder if the performance hit on softmounted 3.5" drives ends up making them as slow or slower than 2.5" drives.. That would be interesting to see.

definitely NOT
2*7200.10 drives in raid, mounted with rubber band=133mb/s average 13.4ms seek
36G raptor softmounted 78MB/s 7.8ms seek
so not, not at all (or not measurable)

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 3:44 pm

well if the performance hit isnt enough to make it comparable to a 2.5" drive, then its basically negligable since i cant even tell a performance difference between a 2.5" 5400rpm drive and a 3.5" 7200rpm drive in real world use.

So yeah, softmount performance hit is a mute point. The only ones that would care about it at all are the egocentric guys that brag about their synthetic benchmark scores.

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 6:20 am

Something that never seems to be mentioned is that having your hard drives on rubber mounts/suspended can make a surprising difference to sound quality for music playback.

It's one of those things which if you use the PC as a music source is well worth looking into and is very easy to check:

Try listening to some music from a suspended hard drive and then with the same drive hard mounted to the case.

Listening on Grado SR125 headphones to .wav files (PCM digital stereo output to Yamaha AV amp) the change is really quite dramatic: The headphones lose all their bass and the music sounds noticeably quieter when the drive is suspended.

I think it must be to do with error correction in the drive.

When the drive is decoupled using rubber grommets or elastic suspension it's free to move around.

A drive suspended on elastic is far worse than just the soft rubber grommets that come with Antec cases.

Taken from the Seagate Article:

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/ ... rives.html

Isolator Impacts on Seek Settling

"The major problem created when mounting a drive on isolators is the additional motion in the driveâ€™s baseplate at seek settle. This condition is commonly called the wind-up mode. The isolators are springs that allow the driveâ€™s baseplate to rotate when the torque created during a seek is applied. The isolators "wind up" during a seek and then unwind when the actuator is trying to settle on track. This unwinding creates too much motion for the servo system to fully track, causing an offtrack condition to occur. This either causes delays in settling or causes the heads to come off track just after settling occurred.

When writing data, the first event causes a slow seek, the latter event is referred to as a write retry. The slower seeks usually cause delays on the order of 1 to 5 msec. The write retry can cause a delay in writing data equal to the time it takes for the disc to complete one revolution. As a whole, this settling problem is larger for writing data than reading data because the heads need to be kept closer to the track centerline during the write process." Seagate Isolator Article

Mr Evil · Post by **Mr Evil** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 7:35 am

WR304 wrote:Something that never seems to be mentioned is that having your hard drives on rubber mounts/suspended can make a surprising difference to sound quality for music playback...

Most likely the background noise from the drive masking sounds in the music, or just imaginary rather than any effect on the playback itself, since any decent player software will buffer enough in RAM to completely eliminate any error correction issues, jitter etc.

Try a double-blind test (foobar2k contains ABX functionality for this sort of test) whereby you have two identical drives in the system, one soft-mounted and one not. Have an identical copy of some music on both drives, play one or the other and see if you can correctly identify which drive is being played from. Since there will always be one of each type of drive, the background noise will be identical, leaving the mounting of the drive used for playback as the only variable. Seek noise might give it away though.

mad_man · Post by **mad_man** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 8:02 am

go, figure

samsung HD401LJ hardmount
average 61.8MB/s seek 14.6ms burst 137.2MB/s
identical drive, softmount with rubberband (very soft...)
average 62.2MB/s seek 14.6ms burst 138.0MB/s

Raptor 36G 18MB cache ADFD hardmount
average 77.9MB/s seek 7.8ms burst 133.1MB/s
same as above softmount with rubberband
average 77.6MB/s seek 7.8ms burst 133.0MB/s

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:48 am

WR304 wrote:Something that never seems to be mentioned is that having your hard drives on rubber mounts/suspended can make a surprising difference to sound quality for music playback.

What a bunch of baloney. It's the same myth that 1K power cables make a 1K sound improvement. Hard drive is reading data. If it can read the data you get sound, if it can't read data you don't get sound, however if you do get the sound it's the same, always.

The only possible explanation for this crap I could conjure is that extra arm movement required for positioning of the head on a soft mounted disk results in electric interference which can be heard in the headphones. However it has absolutely nothing with error correction.

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 5:42 pm

JazzJackRabbit wrote:If it can read the data you get sound, if it can't read data you don't get sound, however if you do get the sound it's the same, always

The interesting thing about this thread (and the Seagate link in particular) is that it shows there can be a difference in actual hard drive performance when the hard drive is suspended.

If there is a physical difference to how the drive works then the suspension could actually affect music playback quality too.

I only have a single hard drive in my PC so my comparison is based on having moved that entire drive (both operating system and partitions for storage including music) from being suspended in an Antec Solo case to being hard mounted.

Over the past year I've tried to use the elastic suspension of the Solo case several times. Each time there's been the same issue with music playback deteriorating until I hard mount the drive again.

The easiest way to see if I'm wrong is to try the same comparison between a suspended drive and hardmounted drive yourself.

sun4384 · Post by **sun4384** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 4:44 am

Will the soft mounting affect the reliability of the drives too?
To me, a little performance loss is something I can happily trade with silence.
However, if it will make drives less reliable, then it's a different story.

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 5:52 am

There's no denying that suspending a hard drive makes it a lot quieter.

When you consider that a large percentage of people on SPCR have had their hard drives suspended for several years, with no problems, reliability is unlikely to be an issue.

It might not work as well suspended but shouldn't break because of it.

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 10:16 am

WR304 wrote: The easiest way to see if I'm wrong is to try the same comparison between a suspended drive and hardmounted drive yourself.

Unless the test is performed under completely double-blind conditions, it's completely ineffective. The mind is a very powerful post-processor, and there's every chance you'll genuinely "hear" what you expect to hear.

As for soft-mounting HDDs actually making any difference to sound playback, add me to the "baloney" camp...

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 5:35 pm

nick705 wrote:there's every chance you'll genuinely "hear" what you expect to hear.

As for soft-mounting HDDs actually making any difference to sound playback, add me to the "baloney" camp...

So if someone else were to try the comparison themselves and hear no difference you wouldn't believe that either.

Another way to think of it is as a series of questions:

The starting point is a Windows XP based desktop PC with a single 3.5" hard drive. It's playing back .wav files stored on the hard drive through Windows Mediaplayer software.

Is the hard drive a mechanical device? YES/NO

Is the operating system, music player and music file stored on the computer's hard drive? YES/NO

Is it possible to play this music file without involving the operating system, music player and hard drive at some point in the process? YES/NO

Is hard drive performance (both speed and overshoot/undershoot during seeks) measurably affected by suspending the drive? YES/NO

If you agree that there is a measurable difference between a suspended hard drive and a hard mounted hard drive is there a possibility that music playback could differ also? YES/NO

jackylman · Post by **jackylman** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 5:59 pm

WR304, the music isn't streaming off your disk in real-time; it's BUFFERED. If a read error occurs, the HD will read again until it gets it right. Hard disks have error-correcting mechanisms, you know, like a cyclic redundancy check (CRC). The rate of non-correctable errors is something like 1 in every 10^22 bits and I doubt that is affected by mounting method. If the data isn't ready and the buffer runs empty, the music won't play at a lower quality, it just won't play at all (i.e. the music will have gaps of silence).

Mr Evil · Post by **Mr Evil** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 6:19 pm

WR304 wrote:So if someone else were to try the comparison themselves and hear no difference you wouldn't believe that either.

I know enough about psychoacoustics to know that you should put little faith in what you think you can hear if you can't measure it in some way, like with a double-blind test. Even the colour of the walls affects how you perceive sound.

WR304 wrote:If you agree that there is a measurable difference between a suspended hard drive and a hard mounted hard drive is there a possibility that music playback could differ also? YES/NO

No, because the data is buffered in RAM before being played, which will completely remove any timing artifacts (not errors, but if you're getting that many errors when reading from the drive then your computer is crashing a lot too).

BillTodd · Post by **BillTodd** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 11:40 am

Isolator Impacts on Seek Settling

"The major problem created when mounting a drive on isolators is the additional motion in the driveâ€™s baseplate at seek settle. This condition is commonly called the wind-up mode. The isolators are springs that allow the driveâ€™s baseplate to rotate when the torque created during a seek is applied. The isolators "wind up" during a seek and then unwind when the actuator is trying to settle on track. This unwinding creates too much motion for the servo system to fully track, causing an offtrack condition to occur. This either causes delays in settling or causes the heads to come off track just after settling occurred.

When writing data, the first event causes a slow seek, the latter event is referred to as a write retry. The slower seeks usually cause delays on the order of 1 to 5 msec. The write retry can cause a delay in writing data equal to the time it takes for the disc to complete one revolution. As a whole, this settling problem is larger for writing data than reading data because the heads need to be kept closer to the track centerline during the write process." Seagate Isolator Article

That's fascinating. I suspect the effect could minimised by adding extra mass to the suspended drive (e.g. a 3mm lead plate screwed to the bottom or perhaps by suspending two drives that are rigidly fixed together).

The alternative is to add some means of damping the vibration. I wonder if those using gel-pack suspensions suffer the same problem?

W304,

As others have said, the 'music' data from the drive is buffered prior to the digital to analogue conversion process so should be completely immune to the timing jitter from the HDD reads. However...

I wonder if you could be hearing the effect of the HDD re-reads on the PC's power supply?

i.e. as the HDD draws pulses of power, it could be enough to modulate the whole power supply and hence affect the analogue output of the sound card.

Although, if you are using an external DAC (e.g. a home theatre amp), it should be completely immune to the problem.

[Edit]

Listening on Grado SR125 headphones to .wav files (PCM digital stereo output to Yamaha AV amp) the change is really quite dramatic: The headphones lose all their bass and the music sounds noticeably quieter when the drive is suspended.

If you find it 'noticeably quieter' is should also be measurable. Do you have any equipment to measure the level? (or perhaps you could record a short section with and without suspension for us to audition? - on another machine)

BTW I'm happy to take your word that there is some difference, but ATM I'm at a loss to explain it.

I think it must be to do with error correction in the drive.

No. The "drive's" error correction will either fix the error completely or report is as a dud. There's no interpolation of data from a hard drive.

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 9:08 am

BillTodd wrote: As others have said, the 'music' data from the drive is buffered prior to the digital to analogue conversion process so should be completely immune to the timing jitter from the HDD reads. However...

It's important to note that I honestly started off looking at this with no preconceptions at all.

The only reason I noticed any change was because I switched computer cases to an Antec Solo case and used the built in elastic suspension.

All I'd altered was the case but suddenly there was this clear difference in sound when all I wanted was a quieter hard drive.

The Antec Solo is an excellent case to compare with: It uses elastic suspension for the hard drives but also offers rubber grommets as an alternative. To hard mount a drive you can simply remove the rubber grommets and screw the drive directly to a tray.

This thread supports my subjective observation that the hard drive operates differently when suspended to being hard mounted.

No one appears to be disputing that there is a small but measurable difference in performance between a suspended and hard mounted drive?

In my example above the single 3.5" hard drive (containing both the operating system, Windows Media Player software and also the music file being played) is an integral part of the playback process.

"Music applications play back audio tracks by reading a chunk of each in 'round robin' fashion, so there's a lot of jumping about by the read/write heads as they access each chunk in turn. The size of each chunk determines how often the heads have to jump to the next location, and this is determined by the 'block buffer size' in your audio application." Sound on Sound.com

Full Article:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov03/a ... ed739b01bb

Along with the music file being read from it the hard drive is also used by the Windows Media Player software and Windows XP operating system. Both of these are essential to music playback and could also be being affected by the small errors induced by suspending the drive.

If you're getting cumulative small errors throughout the music playback process (not just reading the music file but in the software using it also) there has to be a possibility that there could be a small but significant of jitter introduced as a result.

It may not be enough to stop the music playing but that isn't the same as hearing a difference.

"If the numeric value of the waveform is unchanged, why should we be concerned? Let's rephrase the question: "when (not why) should we become concerned?" The answer is "hardly ever." The only effect of timebase distortion is in the listening; as far as it can be proved, it has no effect on the dubbing of tapes or any digital to digital transfer (as long as the jitter is low enough to permit the data to be read. High jitter may result in clicks or glitches as the circuit cuts in and out)" Bob Katz

Full Article:
http://www.digido.com/bob-katz/jitter.html

Don't just take my word for it that there's a difference between a suspended and hard mounted drive for music playback.

Here's a professional sound engineer describing his experiences of the same thing:

"Q) Transferring data from one drive to another can change the sound? Where on earth did you learn that? You know that a copy of files on a hard drive makes a 100% identical copy! How can the sound change?

First of all, I appreciate it when someone questions me when they feel differently. Different experiences make this planet interesting, and I think we're all on the same page about wanting the best possible quality. It helps to have a great monitor system that reveals subtle details, and I have 35 years of music industry background as part of my ability to listen critically. Some esteemed engineers say their isn't a difference when a file is on a different drive - so how can the same file on the same drive in the same computer monitored via the same converters sound different when the computer is physically supported differently?

Two other engineers (in session with me) heard the sound change when we raised the client's computer off the floor with soft isolation pads. The only thing that changed was what the computer was sitting on. We found that setting the computer on a hardwood floor made the sound more immediate and crisp, compared with setting it on soft isolators. On the floor, the snare sounded punchier, the kick more immediate, and the overall sound was tighter." John Vestman

Full Article:
http://johnvestman.com/digital_myth.htm

.

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:01 am

WR304 wrote:"First of all, I appreciate it when someone questions me when they feel differently. Different experiences make this planet interesting, and I think we're all on the same page about wanting the best possible quality. It helps to have a great monitor system that reveals subtle details, and I have 35 years of music industry background as part of my ability to listen critically."
http://johnvestman.com/digital_myth.htm

sigh... whatever the theorising, I can only repeat what I said before:

IF A LISTENING TEST IS NOT DONE UNDER BLIND CONDITIONS IT'S MEANINGLESS

You endlessly get self-proclaimed get "professional sound engineers" with XXXX years' experience in the music industry who wouldn't be seen dead doing silly ABX tests, they "know" what they hear with their vast experience and superior, highly-tuned golden ears.

"I switched the standard mains cable for a $2000 low-oxygen, gold-plated SuperSpatialAwareness 9000, and the difference was clearly audible - there was less 'grain,' the soundstage opened up, the percussion had more 'life' and more 'attack,' and it was as if a 'veil' had been lifted between the performers and the audience! Little short of amazing!"

With that, I'm going to bow out of this thread, as I know how these things end up (badly)...

BillTodd · Post by **BillTodd** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 11:16 am

nick705 wrote:With that, I'm going to bow out of this thread, as I know how these things end up (badly)...

I had prepared a long reply to WR304's previous post but...

I think I'll acknowledge your superiour judgment and bow out myself

BTW I've spent the last 30 odd years in the pro-audio business, much of it designing digital audio equipment.

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 12:36 pm

Edited whilst other people were posting.

See my next post down.

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 1:29 pm

WR304 wrote:The interesting thing about this thread (and the Seagate link in particular) is that it shows there can be a difference in actual hard drive performance when the hard drive is suspended.

I don't doubt that. Head in the hard drive is physically linked to the HDD case. If HDD vibrates more, which is always the case when it is softmounted, head will have harder time focusing on the track which will result in higher seek times. In the extreme cases is the vibration is too high head may even lose focus altogether and will have to refocus again. However, that does not have any effect on the quality of the sound playback. You can have sound skipping (like on your cellphone when you are losing connection) but otherwise given all else equal except hard drive mounting you will get exactly the same quality of sound playback.

WR304 wrote: Full Article:
http://www.digido.com/bob-katz/jitter.html

Don't just take my word for it that there's a difference between a suspended and hard mounted drive for music playback.

Here's a professional sound engineer describing his experiences of the same thing:

"Q) Transferring data from one drive to another can change the sound? Where on earth did you learn that? You know that a copy of files on a hard drive makes a 100% identical copy! How can the sound change?

First of all, I appreciate it when someone questions me when they feel differently. Different experiences make this planet interesting, and I think we're all on the same page about wanting the best possible quality. It helps to have a great monitor system that reveals subtle details, and I have 35 years of music industry background as part of my ability to listen critically. Some esteemed engineers say their isn't a difference when a file is on a different drive - so how can the same file on the same drive in the same computer monitored via the same converters sound different when the computer is physically supported differently?

Two other engineers (in session with me) heard the sound change when we raised the client's computer off the floor with soft isolation pads. The only thing that changed was what the computer was sitting on. We found that setting the computer on a hardwood floor made the sound more immediate and crisp, compared with setting it on soft isolators. On the floor, the snare sounded punchier, the kick more immediate, and the overall sound was tighter." John Vestman

Full Article:
http://johnvestman.com/digital_myth.htm

That article is prime example of total idiots talking about what they know nothing about. There are some facts/terminology that they picked up (jitter, bit for bit, decoupling sound gear from the floor, etc), but because they are unable to completely comprehend the ideas behind those terminology/facts they end up completely butchering the truth and spreading their misguided misundestanding instead.

All else equal softmounting hard drive or the case WILL NOT have any effect on the quality of sound playback. As others have said there are plenty of buffers along the way from hard drive to the media player, for two reasons, one is performance, second is to ensure uninterrupted playback (i.e. no skipping, although that really is a sideeffect of performance benefit). HDD has its own buffer, I'm pretty sure DirectSound interface has its own buffer and media player itself may have its own buffer too. If any of the buffers runs empty because hard drive cannot read data fast enough you will hear skipping (or an error I suppose).

However, as long as you get the sound it will always sound the same because there is no such thing as jitter on the hard drive. HDD has ECC protection, that is it only has two states, either the data can be read as it was recorded or it cannot be read at all. If drive cannot read data or it realizes it read it wrong (using ECC checksum) it will read it again and again until it reads it right or gives up and throws an error. If hard drives had jitter which resulted in inaccurate playback, it would mean that all other files would have been affected and it would have been possible that you saved a text file saying "test" one day and opened it another it would have said "tept". That doesn't happen because of ECC, if hard drive realizes it read the data wrong, it will reread it again until it gets it right.

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:23 pm

BillTodd wrote:That's fascinating. I suspect the effect could minimised by adding extra mass to the suspended drive (e.g. a 3mm lead plate screwed to the bottom or perhaps by suspending two drives that are rigidly fixed together).

The alternative is to add some means of damping the vibration. I wonder if those using gel-pack suspensions suffer the same problem?

I thought you may be interested in what I did to address my "imaginary" sound problem.

The problem with a hard mounted drive is that it's noisy due to vibrations through the case. For a quiet PC it's not really an option.

I eventually ended up putting the hard drive in a Growup Japan Smartdrive 2002c enclosure (weight 1100g) and stood it on a base of acoustifoam.

The enclosure isn't screwed into the case and there is a gap between it and the case.

For me this appears to provide the best of both worlds: The drive is fairly quiet and my "imaginary" sound problem appears largely nonexistent.

At any rate I'm happier with the subjective music sound quality when I listen to it in that configuration. At the end of the day that's the result I was after.

I wasn't able to find any blind listening tests between different hard drive mounting methods to conclusively prove the point either way.

That makes it a bit tricky to continue this thread as conducting my own blind listening test would instantly be treated as unreliable.

I'm sure people such as JazzJackRabbit, nick705 and Mr Evil would welcome the results of an unbiased blind test as much as I would (if only to prove me wrong...)

Growup Japan 2002C Enclosure mounted on Acoustifoam

ACook · Post by **ACook** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 5:28 pm

put the speakers in another room so you absolutely not, not in the dead of night, can hear the pc, then try your experiment.

it's just the difference in resonance you're hearing. "when lifted off the floor it sounded different.." Duh!

BillTodd · Post by **BillTodd** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:22 am

I thought you may be interested in what I did to address my "imaginary" sound problem.

I wasn't suggesting your sound problem was imaginary. However, your suggestions for the mechanism are (how can I put this politely?) unrealistic.

Uncorrected errors from HDDs have to be vanishingly small (a PC could easily read a billion critical bytes a day, one error would leave it crashed)

I suppose a badly/bizarrely handled 'buffer under-run' within the software might be change the sound (if it tried to fill-in the gap with some kind of interpolation), but that wouldn't appear to be what you're hearing.

I've already suggested PSU modulation although, your HT amp should remove that possibility.

BTW Jitter doesn't cause a change of sound. The jitter component (if I can call it that) of a signal get converted to noise by the D to A filtering process (I have an interesting, and maths filled, AES paper around here somewhere that explains why).

The most obvious cause perhaps is acoustic, i.e. your PC is quieter and that is either changing what you're hearing or changing the way you're listening... I don't know :shrug:

If you have a means of recording the analogue o/p with and without suspension , I'd be fascinated to hear it.

I eventually ended up putting the hard drive in a Growup Japan Smartdrive 2002c enclosure (weight 1100g) and stood it on a base of acoustifoam.

The enclosure isn't screwed into the case and there is a gap between it and the case.

Adding mass and damping

What's the drive temperature like? (you don't want an expensive HDD to die prematurely)

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 6:36 am

BillTodd wrote:I've already suggested PSU modulation although, your HT amp should remove that possibility.

That's a really good point.

So far as I can tell the hard drive isn't faulty.

Changing the hard drive mounting method only affects a very small group of components.

If there's a real rather than imaginary difference then the reason must be related to either the way they work or how they interact with one another.

A clear side affect of suspending/softmounting the drive is that the hard drive is free to vibrate more.

If you ignore any possible errors caused by the hard drive what's left to be affected by all this additional vibration?

One non-imaginary problem is that SATA connectors are notorious for working loose through vibration.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article617-page1.html

SATA Connectors

In order to work loose that means the power and data SATA connections must be rocking back and forth by a small amount all the time.

My Samsung Spinpoint T drive is 10 months old and gets unplugged and replugged a lot which makes the SATA cable connection noticeably looser than when it was new also.

Could a less than perfect electrical power and data connection make a difference?

One of the good things about the Growup Japan Smartdrive 2002c enclosure is that it ensures a really solid SATA connector connection. The cables are supported by the edge of the enclosure and I've also taped them in place so there's absolutely no chance of any movement.

The drive sits on a copper heatsink surrounded by dense foam. Temperatures aren't actually that bad at all. At a room temperature of 21.6c the drive is at 37c according to Speedfan S.M.A.R.T monitoring.

It's about 6c hotter compared to just the bare drive mounted in the bottom of the case.

Growup Japan Smart Drive 2002c

I use headphones for listening nearly all the time. I don't have any decent microphones so a recording probably wouldn't work that well.

The PC has a single Sythe SFlex SFF21D 800rpm exhaust fan running. The Nesteq PSU is in semi-fanless mode and the graphics card is watercooled by a Zalman reserator 2.

It's not silent of course but isn't that noisy either.

The PC is about 3 metres away from where I sit also.