HDD's in 5.25" bays (4in3 modules etc)

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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brad89
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HDD's in 5.25" bays (4in3 modules etc)

Post by brad89 » Sun Dec 28, 2008 1:22 am

Hey i've been forced to mount my hdds in my CM690 case with elastic because if i use the stock slide out things it causes to much vibrations and i can hear it outside my room... It shakes my whole table a bit even :(

I'm about to buy my 4th hdd so it's going to be pretty difficult to add it in with the others how i have them, so i've been looking at the coolermaster 4in3 modules and similar designs. But looking at the inside, there is no rubber or anything that would help dampen the vibrations from the drives.

Just wondering, if i bought one of these and put 4 drives in it, would it make noise/vibrate heaps (and cause the same problem i have using the stock hdd holders?)

I've seen some other designs too, such as a scythe one... Would that be any better?

Does anyone use these, and do you recommend them?

Cheers

FartingBob
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Post by FartingBob » Sun Dec 28, 2008 3:07 am

having 4 hardmounted HDD's will be worse than having 3 HDD's suspended and 1 hardmounted. Is there is any way to suspend a drive in the 5.25 bays?

brad89
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Post by brad89 » Sun Dec 28, 2008 3:27 am

Good point. I'll have a look into suspending one of the drive in the dvd bays too.

Is there any cases that are capable of holding 4 drives without causing any extra noise? Possibly the antec p182 as that is supposed to be really good?

My mate has a cosmos case and his hdd tray things have rubber bits on them which is supposed to stop vibrations, but he only has one drive so i can't really determine the effectiveness of it

mkk
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Post by mkk » Sun Dec 28, 2008 8:06 am

I have two Cooler Master stacker 4-in-3 modules lying somewhere since they're not good at all when it comes to countering vibrations. The newer modules look slightly different but the basic construction is the same. I'm using Nexus DiskTwin for my six drives in this Stacker 810 case and it's fairly effective but still not nearly as good as suspension.

MoJo
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Post by MoJo » Sun Dec 28, 2008 10:01 am

Have you considered using a NAS? I used to run six suspended drives but realised NAS is a better solution.

You can easily put it somewhere you won't hear it and use good cooling for the drives. You can also have it download overnight so you don't have to keep your main rig on, and by choosing components carefully you can keep the power consumption down.

Over gigabit LAN performance is fine for just about all purposes, save maybe video editing.

brad89
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Post by brad89 » Sun Dec 28, 2008 10:07 am

Yep, but they are like $250-$300 unless i'm looking at the wrong thing :S

That's too expensive for me, i could get two 1tb drives for that :P

warriorpoet
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Post by warriorpoet » Sun Dec 28, 2008 10:21 am

Are you running too many optical drives to fit another in a 5.25?

These work pretty well: http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std ... etwin.html

They're not as good as suspension, but you'll still get 4 drives softmounted in 3 bays for not a lot of $.

MoJo
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Post by MoJo » Sun Dec 28, 2008 10:49 am

brad89 wrote:Yep, but they are like $250-$300 unless i'm looking at the wrong thing :S
You are looking at the wrong thing :D

Don't get an off-the-shelf NAS, build your own. Just get a really cheap PC with gigabit LAN. If you build new just get one of the £15 Semprons and a £30 mobo. Second hand anything from a Pentium III up will probably be okay. Install Windows (2000 or XP is fine) or use one of the free Linux NAS distros like FreeNAS.

The only real caviat I would add is that you probably need to get a good gigabit LAN controller if you want more than about 20MB/sec file transfers. The problem with a lot of older gigabit controllers is that they are PCI. Try and get one that is PCI-e or CSA. Brand doesn't make much difference, although given the choice Intel is best.

The advantages of using a PC are that you can run overnight downloads, schedule overnight virus scans and defrags etc. You can keep adding cheap 3.5" drives whenever you want more room and never have to worry about noise or heat, and you can even make use of older low capacity drives that otherwise wouldn't get used.

You could even run Windows Home Sever which I hear is good. You can do backups as well in case one of your main PC's drives fails.

For years I messed around adding drives to my main system, when NAS is so much easier.

ugrakarma
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Post by ugrakarma » Sun Dec 28, 2008 2:14 pm

<Nitpick> FreeNAS is freebsd based not Linux </Nitpick>

brad89
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Post by brad89 » Mon Dec 29, 2008 12:27 am

warriorpoet wrote:Are you running too many optical drives to fit another in a 5.25?

These work pretty well: http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std ... etwin.html

They're not as good as suspension, but you'll still get 4 drives softmounted in 3 bays for not a lot of $.
I have 3 spare 5.25" bays at the moment. That is the sort of product i have been looking for, i just wasn't sure how good they work. I'll have a look at some local shops and see what they sell :)
MoJo wrote:
You are looking at the wrong thing :D

Don't get an off-the-shelf NAS, build your own. Just get a really cheap PC with gigabit LAN.
hehe :P

I'll keep an eye out and see if i can pick up any cheap second hand pc's that i could use :)

warriorpoet
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Post by warriorpoet » Mon Dec 29, 2008 8:55 am

brad89 wrote:
warriorpoet wrote:Are you running too many optical drives to fit another in a 5.25?

These work pretty well: http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std ... etwin.html

They're not as good as suspension, but you'll still get 4 drives softmounted in 3 bays for not a lot of $.
I have 3 spare 5.25" bays at the moment. That is the sort of product i have been looking for, i just wasn't sure how good they work. I'll have a look at some local shops and see what they sell :)
MoJo wrote:
You are looking at the wrong thing :D

Don't get an off-the-shelf NAS, build your own. Just get a really cheap PC with gigabit LAN.
hehe :P

I'll keep an eye out and see if i can pick up any cheap second hand pc's that i could use :)
Well, they work a lot better than hard-mounting, but not as well as suspension or enclosure.

About on-par with Antec's first-gen soft mount grommets, I'd say.

MoJo
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Post by MoJo » Mon Dec 29, 2008 11:28 am

brad89 wrote:I'll keep an eye out and see if i can pick up any cheap second hand pc's that i could use :)
Keep an eye out for 780g or 8200 based boards, as they have six SATA ports on board. Otherwise you can get a cheap AM2 mobo off fleaBay and a £5 Sempron to go with it. nForce 630 is a good bet for low power.

Fedor
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Post by Fedor » Wed Feb 04, 2009 7:02 am

I have only had 2 types of 5 or 4 drive in 3 5.25" drive cages, my first being a Icydock MB455SPF-B (a 5 in 3) and after that finding a Silverstone CFP51 (there is also a CFP52B that allows hotswapping that I have not used).

I got the Icydock because it could hold 5 drives in 3 bays, which is fairly rare, however it comes at a price I did not realise at first - it has no cut-outs along its sides, which means you can't have any horizontal "flaps" in your 5.25" bays that would typically support devices that you install there. So I had to crudely mod my case. And to make matters worse, the 80mm fan is not silent, and the vibration of the drives sometimes resonated and created noise too. Bad first experience.

The Silverstone on the other hand was blind luck, and I'll conclude right now its fantastic. The 120mm fan is damn near silent as far as I'm concerned, and the drives are mounted into a cage which is then "plugged", with rubber, into metal brackets that are the ones that actually get screwed to your case, which long story short means the drives do vibrate amongst each other but that vibration does not carry to the case. These things are great, I highly recommend them.

victorhortalives
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Post by victorhortalives » Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:50 am

brad89 wrote:Good point. I'll have a look into suspending one of the drive in the dvd bays too.

Is there any cases that are capable of holding 4 drives without causing any extra noise? Possibly the antec p182 as that is supposed to be really good?

My mate has a cosmos case and his hdd tray things have rubber bits on them which is supposed to stop vibrations, but he only has one drive so i can't really determine the effectiveness of it
Antec P182 will easily hold 4 drives in the bottom drive cage. It uses soft mounts so there is minimum audio moiré (if you know what that is).

BUT make sure you put noise isolation on the bottom of the two case sides and the inside of the front door.

If you have the space and can afford the case, then a 4drive NAS built round a P182 is good and quiet (try using Ubuntu Linux Server 8.04)

It even has space for 2 more drives, soft mounted in the upper drive cage.

inti
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Post by inti » Thu Feb 05, 2009 10:08 am

5.25" drive caddy systems for HDD are very bad for noise. They are designed to fit the drives into the space, with no consideration for noise at all - many even have an incredibly noisy 6cm fan of their own ...

Apart from the lack of any rubber or elastic (and probably no physical space to include your own rubber solutions), and the cheap plastic fronting which gives you no noise barrier at all, the biggest problem is vibration. The HDD are physically mounted together in the caddy system, and so vibrations travel from one drive to another, which can make the vibration of each drive worse by reinforcing it - they kind of "buzz" against each other. Note, this can happen even though the drives are not actually in direct metal-to-metal contact, as the vibrations pass through the structure of the caddy.

Also (unless fan-cooled) can be bad for heat - your drives can overheat.

I'd suggest two things:

(1) Use old PC-parts to make yourself a 4-drive or 6-drive NAS and put it somewhere else in your house/apartment - maybe use power-cable networking if you want a more reliable link to it than wireless. Note: if your existing drives are NTFS-formatted then most FreeNAS type systems are useless, you either need an old Windows XP install or a good Linux distro.

(2) (This is what I do myself) If you are not running your drives in RAID but as single data drives, and you don't need them all the time, then keep your OS drive and one or two other drives inside your PC case - elastic suspended - and get yourself a couple of 5.25" "trayless" HDD rack which you can slot additional data drives into when required. There's a picture of a trayless rack here: http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00029.htm

GonnaBeDeadSoon
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Post by GonnaBeDeadSoon » Mon Feb 09, 2009 6:15 am

If your looking for 3.5 - 5.25 disk solution for quietness

Try googling Schythe Himuro

You could use the spare 3 bays for 3 silenced drives then use the 3.5 bay for the new hard drive

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