Quieting a laptop drive

[Steve Meliza]

Yes, significant vibration would be bad, but I think what we're talking about here is very minor and not noticed till after you've eliminated all other sources of sound. Couple that little vibration to a metal PC case and you've got a speaker of sorts and a tendency for metal parts to vibrate on each other ever so slightly. Even if the platter is perfectly balanced, I'm thinking that the mass of the rotor of the motor isn't equally distributed around its circumference. A little bit of elastic keeps the vibrations from making it out to the metal case.

[Chuck Wintle]

Buy an SSD drive.

i'll second the SSD drive suggestion.

[Curt Harms]

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.

That was my thought as well.

[Myk Rian]

Couple that little vibration to a metal PC case and you've got a speaker of sorts and a tendency for metal parts to vibrate on each other ever so slightly.

Well, there's the solution. Build a wood case. Really.
https://www.floorstoyourhome.com/blo...oden-pc-cases/

[Jeremy Hamaker]

Well first off you assume a lot. The Hitachi Travelstar series of notebook drives currently only goes to 1TB of capacity at a speed of 5400, and he only has one of them. So really the chances that he's actually referring to a TB drive are not so great. Secondly, only two people had replied to his message before you lobbed yours over the wall. Of the two, yes, one of us (Matt Meiser) suggested another SSD. Not really unreasonable considering this fellow has already purchased one SSD and specifically mentioned that he owns a Corsair Power Supply, which is a higher performance brand name power supply that the general computing public either isn't aware of, or won't pay for.
Additionally, my suggestions were three:
SSD (still a very valid suggestion for him).
Acoustimat: cheap in the quantity he needs, easy to apply and readily available.
Rubber grommets: A solution also cheap and readily available, and actually, not too far off from the very suggestion you made after taking a cheap shot at us.

So, do perhaps either Matt Meiser or I owe you an apology for kicking a puppy of yours in a past life, that warranted you taking a cheap shot at him or me?
If so, then by all means, you have my apology.

[Glenn Vaughn]

From the original post I suspect it is the case and not the drive that is the culprit.

If the hym is coming from the case I would be trying to find where it is happening. It may be simply tighjtening something or dampening the vibration point. I have 7 towers and 3 laptops running her in my home computer room with only a slight hum from an 8" fan I use to keep my cable modem cool. There are 4 external USB drives and over a dozen internal drives running. The computers rance in age from 12 years to less than a year old.

The only negative I get is heat - have to run the air conditioner when it is above 45 degrees outside.