[SOLVED] Anyway to quiet down a HDD?

[GorillaMonsoon]

I'm getting kind of annoyed at hearing my hard drive, it's mounted right to a metal plate which mounts to the case with slots and a thumb screw to hold it. Seems like the metal on metal is amplifying the tracking sounds.

I was going to try some rubber grommets or strips of foam or something to isolate it a little from the mounting bracket. But thought I'd ask here first if there are any tried and true methods short of getting an SSD?

 

[MadsModsat]

A long time ago, suspending the harddrive in rubber bands like this was a popular and efficient solution.

But as you are already aware, isolating the HDD in rubber mounts or something similar is the most common way I can think of.

It is difficult to do much to the drive itself, you can't really seal it inside a lot of heavy rubber padding for example, since you run the risk of letting the drive get too hot, so if the drive is a bit noisy, you'll always be able to hear it a little bit. But preventing the vibrations from affecting the chassis metal parts, is a good way to reduce how loud the drive appears to the ear.

I currently have my two internal 3.5" drives mounted in the 5.25" drive bay of my chassis, using adaptors which isolates the HDD from the mount by letting it float on rubber bushings, reducing vibrations transferred to the chassis. It works quite well, but when the noisy HDD of the two is working hard, it is still audible - the noise is just not being made worse by vibrations ressonating into the chassis through the mounts.

 

[GorillaMonsoon]

I kind of figured so. Those suspended discs look hilarious. Unfortunately I don't have any drive bays like that, my mount is pressed up on the back of the MOBO plate. I just hope there is enough meat on my mounting screws to accommodate some rubber o rings or foam tape.

Today I was playing Doom and it sounded like a wire was rubbing against some fan blades, but the damn disc was working extra hard I guess. Hopefully a defrag will help too.

 

[MadsModsat]

I kind of figured so. Those suspended discs look hilarious. Unfortunately I don't have any drive bays like that, my mount is pressed up on the back of the MOBO plate. I just hope there is enough meat on my mounting screws to accommodate some rubber o rings or foam tape.

Today I was playing Doom and it sounded like a wire was rubbing against some fan blades, but the damn disc was working extra hard I guess. Hopefully a defrag will help too.

Has it always been that bad when it comes to mechanical noise from that particular HDD?

I'm just asking, since that description sounds quite bad (although not entirrely unusual), and if it has gotten worse over time, maybe you should consider the health of the drive

 

[GorillaMonsoon]

Has it always been that bad when it comes to mechanical noise from that particular HDD?

I'm just asking, since that description sounds quite bad (although not entirrely unusual), and if it has gotten worse over time, maybe you should consider the health of the drive

First time it got that bad, usually just makes a few drive like noises every so often. It was enough to make me pull off the side panel and hunt for it tho. Of course at that point it stopped going crazy. It hasn't done it since but I also I don't think I gamed anymore today.
It's a Seagate Barracuda 2TB with about 500 Gb used. It's only about 3 months old maybe.
Not sure if being mounted vertical has something to do with it.

 

[MadsModsat]

Mounting a HDD vertically, shouldn't affect its operation much, so you should be safe in that regard. I'm personally a bit old fashioned when it comes to mechanical drives, so when all the new chasisses entered the market with vertical HDD mounts, I was quite sceptical and didn't like the idea. But several drive manufacturers has stated, that as long as the HDD is safely secured to the chassis, mounting the drive vertically is safe to do.

If you are not experiencing any errors or degraded performance, your drive is probably just a bit noisy - from your description it sounded a bit rough, but I don't think you should be worried. I didn't mean to make you worry the drive is faulty, the thought just occured to me because of your description. But you haven't mentioned any other problems than the noise - which could be "amplified" by vibrations transferring to the chassis.

I used to own two WD Raptor 10.000rpm HDDs, and they made a spectacularly loud noise when they were under load, so I know it can get really loud, and still be normal.

But remember, that it is always recommended to keep a backup of your important data regardles.