Quieting a laptop drive

[Stephen Tashiro]

Is there a good way to mount a laptop hard drive in a desktop case so that its vibrations won't make the case hum?

In my hobby building of computer systems, I've tried for years to build a silent desktop. After many different attempts, I'm close. I have a desktop system built in a typical steel computer case. I use a Cosair power supply with a thermally controlled fan and the fan is often not even running. I used an oversized heat sink on the CPU with an "underpowered" fan, a "Coolink 92mm, 1100RPM, 11.5dba Fan (SWiF2-920)" which I can hardly hear even though it runs at full speed all the time. (The heat sink is gets warm to the touch.) I use a solid state hard drive for files that are most read-only and a laptop hard drive for files that are mostly read-write.

The imperfection in this system is that the vibration from the laptop hard drive sets up a very faint resonant hum in the computer case. (I verified the laptop drive is the source of the noise by running the machine with the drive unplugged.) I used standard plastic holders to mount the hard drives in the 3 1/2 in bays in the case. The laptop hard drive is a Hitachi Travelstar 5400 RPM which is known as relatively quiet laptop hard drive.

It seems there should be a way to isolate the vibrations from the hard drive by mounting it in a special way - rather than by taking global measures such as lining the whole case with foam.

[Matt Meiser]

Buy an SSD drive.

[Jeremy Hamaker]

Well, with solid state drives and water cooling and acoustic deadening materials, we have reached a point where a full power computer can be built that is totally silent, except for possible electrical hum, and the noise of the water pump. If you're truly questing for a silent PC, then the previous poster's advice to ditch the turntable and buy another SSD is sound. If you're committed to keeping that drive, and the noise that is bothering you is actually the case vibrating in sympathy to the drive, I have two ideas. First, get a small bit of Acoustimat sound and vibration deadening material and stick it to both of the side panels of the case, on the inside. If you're dead set against that, then get some small rubber grommets and put them between the hard drive and the plastic mounts. I would not cinch the mounting screws down quite as tight in that case, so that the rubber still has some flex. Good luck!

[Steve Meliza]

People seem to forget that there are those of us out there that can't afford a 4TB SSD storage solution.

Yes, they make flexible suspensions to mount 2.5" drives in a full sized bay for the exact use that you are asking about. I don't remember any of the products off hand, but if you dig through some of the info on this page there is plenty to get you started. http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_Hard_Drives

[Matt Meiser]

I must have missed the 4TB requirement???

[Eric DeSilva]

I built a completely quiet PC--I based it on a case from A-Tech Fabrication that used copper heat pipes to channel heat from the CPU and GPU to some heatsinks on the side. Ultimately, I ended up using an SSD, but my recollection was that I also tried some other drives as well... I want to say that I found the NEC Spinpoint drives quieter than some others. There are ratings on these things, and there are also mounts that will address some vibration. You can also put sound deadening material on the inside surfaces of the machine to absorb some sound and vibration. Try http://www.quietpc.com/

While 4TB of SSDs is expensive, one other thing to consider is putting your storage elsewhere. I use a 256 GB SSD, and I've seen highly rated drives like that for about $150--http://gizmodo.com/5980266/our-favorite-ssd-is-your-no+brainer+upgrade-deal-of-the-day. That is well more than what is needed for my machine's OS (Win7), as well as Firefox, the Office 2012 suite, and the Adobe CS5 Master Suite. For large data, I keep a 6 TB RAID NAS, which sits on my network and can be located out of earshot.

[Steve Meliza]

Stephen said he had an SSD for files that are mostly read only and a laptop HD for everything else. Clearly he is aware of what an SSD will do for him, but still needs to use an older technology drive either for its large capacity or low cost (or both). The replies made before mine seemed to ignore this so I pulled 4TB out of my hat as an example of something cheaply done with laptop drives but is breathtaking with SSD. And yes, some people do need 4TB of storage and NAS doesn't always cut the mustard.

A 2TB laptop HDD like I might buy for myself is $190 each. An 800GB SSD like I might buy is $2100 each, though much greater values can be had with the smaller drives as mentioned previously. Even at $150 per 256GB you'd spend $1200 for 8 drives just to have the storage of that single 2TB HDD and you'd still have 8 drives to mess with.

I do value SSD and recently got a new MacBook with it because I see the large advantages. But when hundreds of 15MP RAW image files come off the camera they go onto the PC with large HDD's.

[Harry Hagan]

I built a completely quiet PC--I based it on a case from A-Tech Fabrication that used copper heat pipes to channel heat from the CPU and GPU to some heatsinks on the side. Ultimately, I ended up using an SSD, but my recollection was that I also tried some other drives as well... I want to say that I found the NEC Spinpoint drives quieter than some others. There are ratings on these things, and there are also mounts that will address some vibration. You can also put sound deadening material on the inside surfaces of the machine to absorb some sound and vibration. Try http://www.quietpc.com/

While 4TB of SSDs is expensive, one other thing to consider is putting your storage elsewhere. I use a 256 GB SSD, and I've seen highly rated drives like that for about $150--http://gizmodo.com/5980266/our-favorite-ssd-is-your-no+brainer+upgrade-deal-of-the-day. That is well more than what is needed for my machine's OS (Win7), as well as Firefox, the Office 2012 suite, and the Adobe CS5 Master Suite. For large data, I keep a 6 TB RAID NAS, which sits on my network and can be located out of earshot.

Sounds like good advice to me.

[Matt Meiser]

We've gone to network storage at our house and keep very little on our local drives. Consequently when my shop PC's hard drive failed, I swapped the drive and had it restored in a few hours with almost no work. Ditto when my wife's laptop's motherboard/CPU failed--took me longer to uninstall all the Dell junk than to install the few things we needed and restore all the files from our profiles.

[Jim O'Dell]

Yeah, if noise were that big of a deal for me, I'd do remote storage somewhere else in the house. Use the SSD for the computer case. My back up drive sits on top of my case. It's only on when I back up, then I turn the power off to it, but IIRC, I can't hear it when it's running. It's a DexStar 3 aluminum case, no fans.
I have 5 fans in my mid tower case including the one in the power supply. It's a constant hum. Doesn't bother me at all. But we are all a little different. I can't study with music on, because I pay too much attention to the music. I have to let the music be the reward for getting the studying done. Jim.

[Eric DeSilva]

If Stephen has a decent OS, and by that I mean a current OS that includes TRIM support, limiting an SSD to read only isn't getting the most out of your SSD, so I'd challenge the notion that he is aware of what an SSD will do for him. If it is purely a space issue, a 250 GB SSD is a good amount of storage--when I say I have Win7, Office 2012 and the Adobe CS5 Master Collection on a 250 GB drive, I should probably also note that it only takes up about 1/4 of the drive, along with Sketchup, Chrome, Firefox, and a bunch of other smaller program files. Since I can shoot 300 Nikon Raw images on an 8 GB CF card in my 16MP D700, dropping hundreds of images on my computer isn't a problem. That being said, my wife, who is a professional photographer, transfers her images direct from the camera to the NAS and edits in Photoshop directly off the NAS. Once you address Photoshop's horrible launch time using an SSD, the latency of working off the NAS, versus an SSD, is pretty negligible. And, even if you do want to edit hundreds of your vacation photos on your laptop, there is no reason to keep them on your laptop when you are done--generally most photographers can weed them down to a smaller number they want available 24/7 (and you can save them as jpgs if you are done processing).

Frankly, I can't imagine needing 2TB of space on a laptop full time--the scenarios I can imagine that being needed (say HD video editing) are ones where you would actually get a very substantial performance boost out of an SSD anyway (its the video guys that are using striped RAIDs to increase disk transfer rates). Barring that, if you are at 2TB, you really should rethink what you are keeping on your machine. Since not backing up a fragile drive like a 2TB laptop seems insane, you might think about whether all 2TB of data has to travel with you. And, even if it does, whether you are better off with a transportable drive. I would think a smaller SSD + transportable storage + backup would be a higher performing, more reliable solution for just about anyone.

Bottom line, I think your price comparisons are a bit misplaced, since no one except Lucasfilm imagineers buy 2TB SSDs. And anyone else ought to think about data management to avoid needing 2TB in the first place.

[Steve Meliza]

Note that he is using a laptop drive inside of a desktop computer.

I'm not going to to claim that the average person can't get by on SSD's, but I will stick to the claim that Stephen asked for help in quieting down the drive he had and not help in shopping for an SSD.

[Stephen Tashiro]

Yes, they make flexible suspensions to mount 2.5" drives in a full sized bay for the exact use that you are asking about. I don't remember any of the products off hand, but if you dig through some of the info on this page there is plenty to get you started. http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_Hard_Drives

Thank you for that link. I find the elastic suspension method interesting: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article8-page2.html

I don't have good intuitition for the physics involved the various silencing methods. I think most materials are elastic and so they transfer energy from vibration as mechanical vibration instead of changing it to heat and conducting or radiating the energy away. So it seems that all sound reducing materials can do is to change the frequency of vibirations. I suppose the elastic suspension method releases energgy with vibrationgs at frequences that are too low to hear.

[Myk Rian]

What I would be concerned about is why a 2.5" HD vibrates in the first place. Those disks should be perfectly balanced.
I'd think that drive was in the process of tearing itself apart in short order.
I have never had ANY HD vibrate.

[Stephen Tashiro]

I have never had ANY HD vibrate.

I've never had a spinning hard drive that didn't vibrate a little. Even if the platter is perfectly balanced, you still have the moving arm inside them.

(I'm tempted to say that drives vibrate because when you write more 0's than 1's at certain places on them, but only a humorous person would utter such a statement.)

There is a great difference in vibration and noise between new laptop hard drives and older laptop hard drives. My quiet system got much quieter when I replaced an old Western Digital HD with the Hitach HD. I only hear the noise from the Hitachi when the room is quiet. But its easy to put my finger on the cage where the drive is mounted and feel the vibrations (since the sides are currently off the computer case) If you have fans with an average noise level, they would mask the sounds from a modern laptop drive.