Samsung 250GB Rhythmic Vibrations

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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Oscar
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Post by Oscar » Mon Apr 17, 2006 10:30 pm

discdude wrote:Also, I'm certainly willing to try the blue EAR grommets since they seem to be a fairly easy "upgrade." Does anyone know the model # and a good place to purchase them?
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=9623

aidanjm2004
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Re: Samsung 250GB Rhythmic Vibrations

Post by aidanjm2004 » Sat Apr 22, 2006 3:41 am

discdude wrote:Just bought a 250 GB Samsung Spinpoint SP2504C.

Unfortunately, it has a very strong rhythmic vibration that is audible.
How are you mounting the Samsung drive? Is it mounted with other 3.5 inch drives?

I put a Samsung 2504c 250Gb drive and a Seagate 80 Gb sata drive along with a (suspended) notebook drive into the 3000B case. The two 3.5 inch drives interacted with each other in such a way as to set up a rhythmic vibration as you are describing. The vibrating noise would rise and fall and then rise again in a fiarly constant pattern. It went away when I removed one of the 3.5 inch drives, either the Samsung or the Seagate. Now I have the Samsung suspended in a NoVibes unit in the CD drive area, and the vibrations are gone. So maybe it isn't a problem with your new Samsung drive per se, maybe it is more the result of an unfortunate interaction between the new drive and your older drives.

Avro
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Post by Avro » Tue May 09, 2006 6:18 am

So, I finally got around to suspending all 3 of my HDs (including the vibrating SP2504C) using elastic cord in my HD cage. The Good: it dramatically reduced the seek noise of my 40GB 7200.7 & WD2000JB. The Bad: the annoying pulsing vibration of the SP2504C is still audible. This is really frustrating because I bought this drive after reading all the glowing reviews of the SP series from here.

Has anyone else tried suspending this drive and still experience the pulsing vibrations afterwards? Anyone know of something I can suspend my entire case with? Maybe put my case on big soft foam blocks or something? I think it's airborne noise and not vibration through the case, but I want to suspend my case to test it out. Augh... shoulda bought a WD2500KS instead...

shadestalker
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Post by shadestalker » Wed May 10, 2006 6:35 am

Avro wrote:Anyone know of something I can suspend my entire case with? Maybe put my case on big soft foam blocks or something? I think it's airborne noise and not vibration through the case, but I want to suspend my case to test it out. Augh... shoulda bought a WD2500KS instead...
http://acoustiproducts.com/en/acoustifeet.asp

Or just try some foam or similar soft stuff for a temporary test.

If you can dampen the vibration by putting your hands against one or more case panels, and you're at the end of the road as far as decoupling / moving around your drives, your next option might be mass loading your panels with dynamat or something similar.

Edit: woops, meant dynamat, not acoustipack

perplex
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Post by perplex » Thu May 11, 2006 6:55 am

I just bought a Samsung 250GB to put inside an external enclosure and cannoy believe how quiet the idle is. It's actually silent. Some *VERY* slight swoosh air sound but I can barely hear it. I havn't started transferring files yet it's just been sitting idle. I'll be sure to edit this post and update how the seeks sound. Also, with the excitement I forgot to check which motor it is, Nidec or JVC :?

Felger Carbon
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Post by Felger Carbon » Thu May 11, 2006 8:15 am

Avro wrote:So, I finally got around to suspending all 3 of my HDs (including the vibrating SP2504C) using elastic cord in my HD cage. The Good: it dramatically reduced the seek noise of my 40GB 7200.7 & WD2000JB. The Bad: the annoying pulsing vibration of the SP2504C is still audible. This is really frustrating because I bought this drive after reading all the glowing reviews of the SP series from here.

Has anyone else tried suspending this drive and still experience the pulsing vibrations afterwards?
I agree with aid-2004 that the problem is not just the 2504, but a beat note between it and another device. Can you turn off the other two drives, one at a time or both together, to test this? Can you place a thickish magazine between suspended drives to block the sound from some drives but not others? If the interaction is only with one of the other two drives, perhaps placing the "neutral" drive in the middle of the 3 suspended drives will help.

Avro
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Post by Avro » Thu May 11, 2006 10:21 am

Felger Carbon wrote:I agree with aid-2004 that the problem is not just the 2504, but a beat note between it and another device. Can you turn off the other two drives, one at a time or both together, to test this? Can you place a thickish magazine between suspended drives to block the sound from some drives but not others? If the interaction is only with one of the other two drives, perhaps placing the "neutral" drive in the middle of the 3 suspended drives will help.
I agree that it's probably caused by some weird harmonic interaction between the Samsung and one of my other drives. I will try running my box without the Samsung powered and I think that will eliminate the noise. Then I'll try with the SP2504C with 1 of the other drives and see which is causing the harmonic and report back. But like I mentioned in my first post in this thread, I was running 2 PATA + 2 SCSI drives and didn't have this weird harmonic. So for me, it's definitely the Samsung that's causing the noise.

perplex
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Post by perplex » Thu May 11, 2006 10:57 am

OK my P120 250GB is SO damn quiet. It's in an IcyBox external enclosure and when it's idling I can barely hear it, I couldn't ask for more quiet. During seeks my laptop's HDD is louder (seriously). My laptops' HDD is that Toshiba 4200RPM 40GB. I'm really happy :D

tempoct
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Post by tempoct » Thu May 18, 2006 9:33 am

I've just got this drive to replace my 160GB Seagate 7200.7 for two days and also experiencing this vibration noise.

I installed it in SmartDrive 2002, temp is around 38 with low usage (which is OK, I think). The smartdrive is hardmounted in 5.25 inch bay.

Good thing is, no more "AutoSearch" from seagate drive. I think the airborne noise is a little less and seek noise is less sharp... I also gain performance by moving from PATA to SATA and more storage.

The bad is, the vibration!! Much more than the Seagate :P I didn't expect to suffer this...

Oh, my drive is the 250GB version, NIDEC motor.

Any idea to dampen it?

cpemma
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Post by cpemma » Sun Jun 11, 2006 10:37 am

I'm getting the same regular pulsing with a pair of Seagates so it's not a Samsung problem per se. But I never heard this with the same setup (and hard-mounted drives) in my old Antec 1030B case, so some blame must attach (in my case) to the flimsier Antec 3000B.

Jackal5
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Post by Jackal5 » Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:21 am

I'm glad that I should find this topic. I'm having the same "beating" problem with my Samsung 250G SATA drives. I have 2 of them as storage and a 60G Maxtor or WD or something for the OS. But I was wondering what that crazy pulsing sound was. Sounds like something is a spaceship of a sfi-fi movie. I'll check the drives out by disconnecting them one by one to see if there is a difference.

Lawrence Lee
SPCR Reviewer
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Post by Lawrence Lee » Mon Jun 12, 2006 11:23 am

Jackal5 wrote:I was wondering what that crazy pulsing sound was. Sounds like something is a spaceship of a sfi-fi movie. I'll check the drives out by disconnecting them one by one to see if there is a difference.
Come to think of it, it did sound like the humming of the warp reactor on Star Trek: TNG.

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