Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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Ozkar
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Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Post by Ozkar » Mon Feb 21, 2011 10:59 am

I sucessfully installed a Caviar Green drive in a Rosewill enclosure without any direct contact from the HD to the enclosure (except for the sata connection). I used a couple of rubber pads to isolate the drive. However, I'm worried that the drive will get too hot, since the heat won't be transferred to the enclosure. Which material can I use to transfer heat to the enclosure, without transferring vibration?

Fire-Flare
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Re: Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Post by Fire-Flare » Mon Feb 21, 2011 1:37 pm

Would cutting holes in the rubber so it keeps the shape but lets air through help?

ces
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Re: Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Post by ces » Mon Feb 21, 2011 2:18 pm

Ozkar wrote:Which material can I use to transfer heat to the enclosure, without transferring vibration?
water & air.

fumino
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Re: Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Post by fumino » Mon Feb 21, 2011 4:26 pm

vibration is worse for drives than heat, dont get too worked up about it.

Tephras
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Re: Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Post by Tephras » Mon Feb 21, 2011 6:28 pm

Ozkar wrote:Which material can I use to transfer heat to the enclosure, without transferring vibration?

Coolpacks/cold packs/gel packs or whatever you'd like to call them has been used by other forum members. Coolpacks for a cool and quiet drive!

HFat
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Re: Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Post by HFat » Tue Feb 22, 2011 3:34 am

Drives can run fairly hot without issues, at least if you don't warm them up after letting them cool down too frequently.
Instead of worrying, monitor the temperature. Any modern enclosure should have an eSATA port. You can get SMART information through that. If you don't have an eSATA port, it would be harder to get an idea of the temperatures inside the case but it would be better than worrying without having any information.

Thermal pads are not only used for small parts. I don't know how effective they are but I guess they'd be the most appropriate material. See SPCR's review of the Morex T1610.

Keep in mind that cooling happens through raidiation as well if you have a line of sight. If your case is made of metal, the inside will be about as hot the inside and it would radiate more energy away than it receives even in a vaccum. It wouldn't be very efficient at all but a low-power hard drive doesn't generate very much heat for its size. Any opaque material between the drive and a metal case would be an impediment to this form of cooling.

andymcca
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Re: Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Post by andymcca » Tue Feb 22, 2011 5:42 am

Didn't Google come out with a study of hard drive longevity and found no correlation between temperature and longevity? I forget how many drives were in the data set, but I do recall it was impressive.

HFat
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Re: Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Post by HFat » Tue Feb 22, 2011 6:34 am

It's not that there was no correlation. Low average temperatures were bad for young drives (possibly an artifact) and more than 40C was bad for old drives. But the aggregate effect was not a big deal. Some drives may be more sensitive however because in one category the failure rates were much higher with high temperatures.

ces
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Re: Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Post by ces » Tue Feb 22, 2011 6:05 pm

andymcca wrote:Didn't Google come out with a study of hard drive longevity and found no correlation between temperature and longevity? I forget how many drives were in the data set, but I do recall it was impressive.
My recollection was that high, but not real real high temps were best for the life span of the hard drives.

There were a large number of drives involved, so the results are not likely to be artifacts or statistical anomalies. No one had any good explanations for the results... at least anything they would make public. As I remember, one brand stood out as better than the rest, but Google refused to identify which one it was.

To some extent, perhaps this makes sense. Sort of like the Blackbird jet that didn't perform well at normal temps but was designed to perform best at highly elevated temps. Perhaps the hard drives were designed to operate in a particular temp range.

Keep in mind that these hard drives were subjected to continuous heavy duty use 24/7. That by itself might make the results inapplicable to desktop hard drives.

Also keep in mind these were hard drives ordered by and delivered to Google. Even if the drives are the same model numbers that you and I use, I find it difficult to believe that they are 100% identical to the ones you and I order.

CTT
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Re: Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Post by CTT » Wed Feb 23, 2011 2:46 am

I think the document people are referring to is this one:
http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&source=we ... PH6HavPX3g

I'm not terribly concerned about high temperatures either, as long as they're not extreme (i.e. very close to/over maximum allowed).
As a side note, I had a 7200 RPM Samsung that worked at 55-60C for about three years until I sold it (it was suspended between a couple of sponges in a 5.25" drive bay with no airflow; the sponges actually melted where they touched the drive and stuck to it - I had to remove them with a cutter).

Back to the topic at hand, vibration reduction material is generally not very good at conducting heat because it's usually spongy, i.e. it's filled with air and air is a quiet good thermal insulator.

There are some thermal pads used to isolate transistors from heat sinks which seem quiet flexible; it might be worth a try if you can find some at an electronic shop.

AhamB
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Re: Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Post by AhamB » Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:27 am

ces wrote:
Ozkar wrote:Which material can I use to transfer heat to the enclosure, without transferring vibration?
water & air.
Huh? Air is an insulator... If it would transfer (conduct) heat there would be no need for fans. ;)

ces
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Re: Which material would transfer heat but not vibration?

Post by ces » Sun Mar 06, 2011 11:18 am

AhamB wrote:Huh? Air is an insulator... If it would transfer (conduct) heat there would be no need for fans. ;)
Conventional heatsinks transfer heat from the CPU to air, which is then drawn out of the case, carrying the heat with it.

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