Does anyone know where I can lay my hands on some isolating mounts? I'm thinking of building something to keep my hard drive from touching the case chassis, so I'm not looking for anything industrial sized, just able to take the weight of a hard drive and a fairly heavy aluminium enclosure for the drive.
RS, Farnell? Might be "industrial sized" though. Failing that some small soft grommits with a bolt through the middle just to hold them together.
For that small a load, I'd use genuine d-i-y bitsnpieces: cut slivers off a rubber (eraser, for the transatlantic gigglers), or bits of leftover cork tile, or best of all the cork of a bottle of good wine. Drink the wine first, then you'll be able to ignore the vibration from the HD for another day before you get around tuit ;-)
The anti-vibration 'machine mounts' you'll find at rswww.com are likely to start at about 5-10 times the weight you want to isolate...
Stefek
Note that many drive manufacturers stipulate that the drive itself should be firmly screwed to something solid for the drives own internal damping and servo control mechanisms to work correctly. So you may be better off bolting the drive to something solid then isolating that.
It also depends a bit on why you are isolating the drive - to stop vibrations on the chassis reaching the drive, or to stop drive noise reaching the chassis.
One simple solution is a number of strong elastic bands - use them to suspend the drive in a 5.25" drive bay.
Now that sounds like a really neat idea on the surface, but I've tried it and whilst it does a good job of isolating the vibration there are some drawbacks. I actually used those elastic luggage straps (the ones with the metal hooks on the end) as they are multi-stranded so you can easily alter the strength and hung the drive in the 5.25" bay. Problem is that you only have ~1" of clearance and the torque reaction when they spin up can cause the drive to hit the cage. This is also a problem if you move/knock the PC, made worse I suspect because HDDs precess, the faster the disk the worse the problem. Plus the problems are compunded if you have more than one disk.
My 3.5" drive cage is removeable so I'm going to mount the drives in that and sit it on foam blocks on the floor of the 5.25" cage (stuck using double-sided tape so they don't move if move the PC). I'm going to try making the blocks by laminating several pieces of a cloth mouse mat.
Another use I've found for cloth mouse mats (depending where you work there may be shedloads of these lying around from companies that hand them out as freebies, although hard plastic ones seem more common) is for soundporofing the PC case. I've stuck a couple on the inside of one of the side panels with double-sided tape and noticed a reduction in noise. I need to get some more and completely cover the side and top panels, using spray adhesive to get 100% contact.
I've heard of people using a lashup of elastic cord to mount a 3.5 inch drive in a 5.25 inch bay for the purposes of vibration/noise suppression, if that helps.
Are you trying to stop the vibration from the drive finding its way into the case or visa-versa?
Our office has found that fast high speed drives (10,000 rpm) lose a lot of their speed if they are not rigidly mounted. They are designed to be rigidly mounted.
Presumably resilient mounting causes the servos to overshoot. YMMV.
DG
In message , Doki writes
You may want to check the 'silent storage' forum at
Soup just had to say
Possibly investigate the servo holding grommets for radio control systems (the same order of size and weight and torques are catered for by "mounts" for high power/large servos) .
I looked into shock mounting for drives a few years ago (we had a job for a client to build a computer system in a mobile training vehicle and hence wanted something that would withstand vibration etc while in transit). The results of my research at the time basically highlighted some of the same issues you mention above. That non rigid mounting of the drive is actually likely to make the effects of external vibration on the drive more likely to cause damage, as it can accelerate before coming into contact with solid metal work. You can also build up parasitic oscillations in the drive.
If you do need to build a vibration mount it is better to fix the drive well into the computer - but then vibration mount the whole computer (or better still a rack of computers)
The best results I have had for quietening a PC down are with the self adhesive noise damping pads. I used to get them from CPC - but I am not sure if they still do them. They are made from a heavy dense plastic coated bitumen material, designed for use in car body panel suppression. They remove all the "music" from the case of a PC nicely - removes much of the "drumming" that you can get that amplifies the drive and fan noises.
Sounds like a good tip.
Sounds like similar stuff to this from QuietPC
The CPC ones looked a bit differnt and was more aimed at dampening vibration rather than directly absorbing sound....
Oh at was about 1.90 for a pack ;-)
Just had a look at the package for one:-
Sound Deadening Pad made by: Panther Products Ltd Morley, Leeds
But a google turns up nothing much that looks likely...
[T] As long as you keep the drive in it's 'bay' (PC chassis frame) you should be ok. If you mechanically isolate the drive itself, apart from the points raised so far, it *may* also overheat? I have isolated a drive but made pair of 'L' shaped metal plates to act as a point for the mount and to provide cooling (you can increases the cooling effect by slitting the sheet down and twisting the 'strips' by turning them through 90 deg at the end).
I also go along with the sound deadening panels. I bought a pack from a car spares shop to do my Netware server (when I was a CNI). It turned it from a tinny noisy thing to something that sounded .. well 'dead'? No ringing or drumming .. it was heavy to lift though! ;-)
Another thing I do on my own machine is to run the case , PSU and CPU fans at a reduced voltage (you may not be able to get a big / efficient enough heatsink on more powerful CPU's). They move nearly as much air but are also much quieter (and seem to last longer?)
Lastly, could you use tighter power management on the HDD to shut it down when idle?
All the best ..
T i m
Heavy duty double sided stick pads are very effective as vibration insulators. I have used them to isolate cooling fans in Hi Fi Cabinets where virtual silence is necessary. Using several pads will mount a hard drive firmly but will effectively isolate it vibration wise.
Richard.
[T] That's a good idea ... or even a couple of strips of thick (2mm) double sided tape (or you could double up for a 'softer' mount)? You can get a load (50m?) of the good stuff at a double glazing / plastics supplier for a few quid (possibly cheaper than the pads?).
All the best
T i m
>In article , Doki writes
If you are looking for DIY rather than off the shelf, this guy's site, might help:
In the past I have used foam inserts which come with cycling helmets. However I'm not sure where you might buy these - the ones I used were surplus to requirements when we bought new helmets.
PoP
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That's a bit like how it's currently mounted - a pair of 2 or 3mm alloy plates sandwich the hard drive, and that's on top of some foam to stop it touching the case. Nearly eliminates the usual hard drive clicking noises etc. I'm likely to be replacing the HD with something faster and bigger soon though, so temperatures might need monitoring. I wonder if it would be worthwhile finding a removable 3.5" cage, weigh it down with a load of lead and then mount that within the 5 1/4" bay section of my tower case? With a new HD I'll mostly be trying to get rid of the high pitched bearing whine rather than the seek noise.
I'll have a look, though IME they're not cheap. Not as cheap as free anyway :).
It's a Celeron 333 (overclocked to 5x83 rather than 5x66 as standard) using a standard retail heatsink which seems to keep it stable and quiet. I reckon the PSU is getting attacked by the angle grinder and having a Panaflo or similar dropped in though.
The reason I want it *really* quiet is so I can run it when I'm sleeping at the other end of my room. I'm out in the country so I'm on dialup at 33k when the wind's blowing the right direction, and I want to be able to have the PC download things when I'm not using it. Thus having the thing go into suspend is not handy :).
Whatever I make will probably be pretty heavy, so I shouldn't have any problems with it moving about due to the inertia of the drive internals.
I want it quiet.
Tried that, didn't really like the way the drive swung about.
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