Silencing external Drive?

sando · Post by **sando** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 2:51 am

I have a LaCie D2 (bought before i started to think about silencing), and it's now by far the loudest component in my system. This is particularly annoying as it has to be on if I want to listen to any music.

I've recently realised it was making my whole desk vibrate, through it's (fairly soft) rubber feet. It's now lying on a t-shirt, but it's still the loudest component, despite a reduction in the desk vibration noise. However, the t-shirt solution isn't ideal for cooling or aesthetics (most of the reason why I chose it over something cheaper).

Any more ideas for silencing such a thing?

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 5:04 am

Heh that is funny because I have a brick power supply that resonates with my desk (probably because of power transformer at 60Hz inside). Same thing with my halogen table lamp. It's silent when it's cool, but after it warms up there is starts buzzing along with the table. Annoying to say the least.

Anyway, rubber feet can be different. The softer the better, regular rubber feet, if they are hard are no that great at reducing induced vibrations. Rubber feet included with P180 case for example are great, very soft. If you aren't concerned with idle noise of the hard drives I would suggest foam which works much better. You can slip an entire square under your NAS or you can cut our four individual foam feet to fit around your regular rubber ones. Shouldn't look too bad. You can play around with different types of foam but I would recommend medium density as too soft of a foam will collaps under the weight of the NAS and too hard will not be as effective at reducing vibrations.

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 5:45 am

Forgive me if this suggestion is a bit too obvious--but how about putting the thing on the floor behind the desk rather than on top of it? You can then suspend it in any fashion and not worry about how ugly it is.

If that's not enough noise reduction, you could put it inside a cardboard rectangular tube, along with an undervolted fan to provide airflow through the tube. Then surround this tube with pillows.

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 6:05 pm

This is actually a hard drive enclosure, not a NAS box. So I suppose it's a matter of convinience - would you rather have the enclosure on the table within the reach of your hand or under the table where you have to dive every time you need hard drive?

sando · Post by **sando** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 5:27 am

I bought the thing for two reasons: First, I do want something I can move around, to share large quantities of files with mates (all non-copyright, of course). Also, I'm getting a laptop before I go to uni, and this way I won't need to copy lots of files across my distinctly flaky wireless network.

So, as this is going to be used for portability, I'm not up for the tube/pillows plan, though I will have a go at improving it's base so it doesn't transmit the vibrations.

I might also pop the case and see what can be done, unless anyone can tell me now that's going to be futile?

IdontexistM8 · Post by **IdontexistM8** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 3:12 pm

My tips for external drives are to look at putting them on either a rubber mouse mat, a polystyrene block or foam padding.

Indeed I've used the padding from the external enclosures' packaging to good effect.

Other option would to be to boost the rubber feet with sorbothane.