What is your first step when silencing 7200RPM HDDs?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply

What is the first thing you do in order to reduce the most distrurbing noise from 7200 RPM HDDs?

I suspend it to reduce vibration noise
20
56%
I put it inside a third-party silencing enclosure
4
11%
I mod my own enclosure-type silencer solution (e.g. foam based sandwich or other)
1
3%
I have banned 7200-drives entirely because they are simply too noisy
6
17%
None of the above, I go about my 7200-drives in a different manner - see my post below where I briefly describe what I do to them
5
14%
 
Total votes: 36

guermantes
Posts: 56
Joined: Mon Sep 20, 2010 12:07 am
Location: Atlantic Ocean

What is your first step when silencing 7200RPM HDDs?

Post by guermantes » Sun Nov 28, 2010 1:18 pm

Hi,
I am trying to understand how to go about my 7200 HDDs from a noise perspective. I have only owned three in my life so my experience of them is limited and when I recently bought a WD5000AAKS that turned out to sound like a jet engine I got very confused. Reading threads here on the forum gives me the impression that elastic suspension is very popular in the silencing community and this puzzles me because to my ears the air turbulence noise that comes from the idle disk which is spinning is so much more apparent and disturbing than vibration noise and or seek noise. Yet, vibration and seek noise seems to me to be what people are most trying to come to grips with here on the forum. Of course, this could be because the issue of turbulence noise has already been solved, and this ambiguity is the reason why I post this poll.

I would simply like to ask the forum members what their preferred first step to silence the most annoyinjg noise coming from a 7200 RPM drive would be. This is so that I can get my knowledge a little more in perspective and more properly gauge what to expect from drives I consider buying.

So, please share with me and others your first-take on 7200RPM drives as regards silencing.

Thank you.

/g

The WD5000AAKS (which had the casing of the more noisy version discussed here at the forum) has since been returned and since I was scared off so much by the discovery of the two versions, I used the money to buy a Megahalems instead.

Fire-Flare
Posts: 422
Joined: Sun Jun 13, 2010 12:44 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: What is your first step when silencing 7200RPM HDDs?

Post by Fire-Flare » Fri Dec 17, 2010 11:15 pm

My first step is to get a 2.5" drive instead of 3.5" Then upgrade to a a bunch of 5600 or 5900s in RAID 0.

Before I learned that trick though, I would wedge the drive into its cage with foam on all sides. I learned with an open-air build that pressure on the 'lid' of a drive would sharply decrease the airy 'whirr' noise. Foam achieves that goal without choking the pressure balancing hole and absorbs all the vibrations.

jamotide
Posts: 41
Joined: Thu Dec 02, 2010 11:39 pm

Re: What is your first step when silencing 7200RPM HDDs?

Post by jamotide » Sun Dec 19, 2010 4:42 am

Automatic acoustic management (AAM)

Sure its pretty slow now, but I don't hear anything.

tim851
Posts: 543
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2008 11:45 am
Location: 128.0.0.1

Re: What is your first step when silencing 7200RPM HDDs?

Post by tim851 » Sun Dec 19, 2010 11:53 am

First step would be to get a Scythe Quiet Drive enclosure. Then put the drive in there and sandwhich the thing in a 5.25" bay with some nice foam all around it.

That made 5.400 rpm Green Power Drives very quiet, albeit not really inaudible. A 7.200 Caviar Black was still pretty audible though.

I had to buy a 2.5" drive, put that in a 2.5" Scythe Quiet Drive and put that into yet another 3.5" Drive to achieve anything resembling close to silence.

bozar
Posts: 305
Joined: Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:49 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: What is your first step when silencing 7200RPM HDDs?

Post by bozar » Sun Dec 19, 2010 12:44 pm

Suspending it is the superior solution imo. It will lower noise beside vibration to. A close second is just laying it on a bit of foam but it won't work with multiple drives.

probey
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Jul 31, 2010 7:17 pm
Location: Toronto

Re: What is your first step when silencing 7200RPM HDDs?

Post by probey » Sun Dec 19, 2010 1:43 pm

I followed this post viewtopic.php?t=49562&highlight=cosmos+1000 and used stretch magic, now my HDDs are as silent as SSD. I am very happy with the result.

who1zep
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 34
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2003 9:03 am
Location: Kentucky Wildcats!

Re: What is your first step when silencing 7200RPM HDDs?

Post by who1zep » Fri Dec 24, 2010 8:26 pm

HDDs these days are quieter than a few years ago, because they are using a different type of bearing. You may be dealing with a noisy drive that you may not be able to get a good result with.

Ozkar
Posts: 179
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2003 6:22 pm
Location: Queens, NY

Re: What is your first step when silencing 7200RPM HDDs?

Post by Ozkar » Fri Jan 14, 2011 8:34 am

I remember that one of the experts here used to buy this rubbery material and cut it in strips. Then he placed the hard drive on two of those strips. Very elegant method. I used a raptor HD for about 6 years using this method and it worked wonderfully. I wonder if people still do that. I still have some of that material in a box somewhere. I might use it with my new build (Antec p183 case and Caviar Black 2TB drive)

nd4spdbh
Posts: 88
Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2005 8:16 pm
Contact:

Re: What is your first step when silencing 7200RPM HDDs?

Post by nd4spdbh » Sat Jan 15, 2011 7:59 pm

Stretch magic = best. stuff. ever.

Plain and simple for the 3 bucks for 20 - 30 ft of the stuff, its the best bang for your buck. Suspend that hdd and just bout all the noise is gone. ALL my hdds in my comps are suspended. even the WD 320gb laptop hdd in my htpc.

Post Reply