Silent Hard Disks
- Thread starter Mummy
- Start date
Yep, 2.5" laptop drives, or 3.5" drives suspended with rubber/knicker elastic, etc.
If you're wanting to know about quiet "stuff", go here:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/
it's all you need to know.
If you're wanting to know about quiet "stuff", go here:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/
it's all you need to know.
Pretty much any 3.5" desktop HDD is 'silent' these days, possibly barring actuator noise, and I wouldn't want a slow actuator rather than a bit more silence since faster access speed is so important for disk IO performance. What you gotta watch out for with 3.5" units though is resonance. Particulary with drives with more than one platter (more mass spinning, meaning more vibrations), and PARTICULARY if you got more than one HDD installed.
I had to put my PC on a large rectangle of compressed foam rubber (basically car engine compartment insulation, that I bought at an auto dealership many years ago now), in order to stop the resonance in my box; I have 3 HDDs and 4 large fans plus 2 small ones mounted in it. Try that; disconnecting the entire PC chassis from the desk can lead to substantial noise savings!
I had to put my PC on a large rectangle of compressed foam rubber (basically car engine compartment insulation, that I bought at an auto dealership many years ago now), in order to stop the resonance in my box; I have 3 HDDs and 4 large fans plus 2 small ones mounted in it. Try that; disconnecting the entire PC chassis from the desk can lead to substantial noise savings!
No... no... no... that is not called resonance
What was happened in your case is when you put more than one hard disks in to the same structure and all the disks spin at the same RPM which results in higher harmonic force apply to the case's structure. I don't think all computer case will have its natural frequency at the same rate of Hard disk spidle, which if it was... your case would be saking insanely like mad since the case have only stiffness and less damping. The way you installed the insulation between the drive and the case is mean that you put some absorbing device in between so that it will absorb most the vabrating energy (harmonic force) from hard disks. However, if you are lucky that the harmonic of the drives have opposite phase, the force will likely to cancel each other, thus no vibration at all. The resonance problem in the hard disk is related to it head, and the weight on more disks will likely to cause unbalancing in the spin rotation. But this kind of unbalancing can be corrected at the drive manufacturing Anyway, the most annoy saking thing nowaday I would nominate the DVD/CD device more than Hard disk.
Last edited by a moderator:
The spinpoint series from samsung is supposed to be quit, atleast it used to be, check out the forums at http://www.silentpcreview.com/ for some up to date info
Unfortunately this is not true. It may be the case that some drives can't be heard over the rest of the racket that a PC makes, but that's a completely different thing from "silent".
Ahh... this explains much
Regarding the Samsung spinpoints, these were the quiet drives of choice a few years ago (the P80 series), when suspended and with AAM enabled they were virtually inaudible outside a case (a case with no fans that is!). The more recent models are much more noisy, and even the P80 now isn't what it was since Samsung started sourcing the drive motors from Nidec instead of JVC. As far as I'm aware there's nothing on the 3.5" market currently which is as quiet as the P80's were.
I just bought a 500GB WD RE2 drive, and hot damn, it's silent. I thought my previous Seagate 7200.7 was silent but this is really impressive! Highly recommended.
A couple of years ago, I built a chamber out of wood and "silencing foam", hanging a 2.5" drive in rubber straps inside of the chamber. That was 100% silent. But neither practical nor good performance...
A couple of years ago, I built a chamber out of wood and "silencing foam", hanging a 2.5" drive in rubber straps inside of the chamber. That was 100% silent. But neither practical nor good performance...
I am glad to hear that BTW it is on my "to buy list" but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I want a SATA burner, and that HDD for my HTPC to clear up the internals and quiet it down a lot. I will still need a better motherboard, but that can be done later. (mine has a loud Heatsink on it)
They are very quiet, I have one. But they're hot as hell too, I'm thinking about some additional cooling.
