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Silencing a Hard Drive Using Household Items
Reader Justblair recommends his blog entry detailing how he made a hard drive silencer for a pittance. "This article demonstrates a very easy-to-make hard drive silencer that not only outperforms most commercially available devices, but is cheaper to implement as well. Requiring very little in fabrication skills, it is an ideal addition to a media PC or HTPC. It may even suit you if your head is aching after many hours of being whined at by your hard drive."
Does it involve bludgeoning with any number of common household items?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
the fans are the noisiest part of my computer, and always have been on any computer ive ever had. However i do occationally hear the click-click of the head moving, but never the whine of the platters, will this sort that out too?
ive seen another hard drive silencing technique elsewhere that's even cheaper, although possibly not quite as effective, which is simply to mount it with rubber bands in a 5.25" bay rather than screws.
http://www.spodesabode.com/archive/content/article/hddnoise
It's easier yet to suspend hard drives to silence them.
I saw it years ago on MacGuyver.
But Hard-drive noise never seemed to bother me.
It's usually a nice feedback as to when my computer is using the hardrive... lets me know if something is wrong, or if something's going on that i'm not expecting.
Usually, it's also active for short bursts and then you the heads stop moving and it becomes quiet again. Never stopped me from sleeping in the same room with a computer...
the actual rotation of the plate? i can really barely hear that anyway.
Sigs are for the weak.
Or you could just buy some newer hard drives out there with high ariel density. WD 640GB AAKS model & 1TB drives are practically dead silent. That or buy some SSD's. Really this noise issue is beginning to lose importance these days and that's the point I'm trying to make here.
He's lucky his drive lasted that long. I've yet to see a maxtor or a seagate inside of one of their enclosures last that long. Having taken them apart, I saw that the seagate one was completely covered, multiple times, with no airflow.
Those things get way too hot. My mom has a new hard drive (as of this summer) with three directories of files recovered from signatures. Nasty.
Drives should be covered with moving air. They should also be mounted to the ground plane (which is the PC case.)
He embeds them in gel and he suspends them with elastic.
I'm not sure that the 'cooling pads plus box' enclosure is a good idea. It looks like it will make the drive less efficient at radiating heat away. Might lead to overheating, especially in the fanless system in the article.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Is a hammer a household item?
Whilst I could do without the constant whine of the drive spinning, I actually like that I can hear the heads doing their thing because you can use it as another way to monitor what my system is doing. If the hdd starts making lots of noise when I don't expect it to, I want to know whats going on.
There is a reason why Apple uses (used to use) FEA programs to design the cooling systems of their computers, and it is not marketing. In the good old days, you often found bad engineering practices in cheap PCs - such as the hard drive being screwed wrong side down to the chassis - and it was then not unusual for them to work OK as a desktop but fail quickly if used as a server, because the HDD was now actually doing some work.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Now, I can image a large number of household tools to cut up a hard drive, but whether they will fulfill the criterion "outperforms most commercially available devices"?
Isn't that a sign of impending failure? My hard drives have always been unnoticeable audibly except when there was an impending head crash. Me thinks hard drive noise is likely a reason to shop for a new drive.
The only way I would do this is if all my important data was on a server in another part of my house with all the HDD with seperate coolers, this can be as noisy as I like as it would only bother the cat.
Then I could have a silent PC using all the data only on the server via a nice fast network, then if the local one dies you drop in another 20GBP HDD and reinstall.
There is no way in hell I would trust important data with a system that ran the HDD hot. Absolutely no way.
Still, I applaud his free thinking and can do approach.
I've got about 6 years worth of cat hair coating my hard drive and it's very quiet now... also heats my feet during the winter... you get used the smell after the first year...
You mean like using a hammer?
- Life is what keeps you occupied while you are waiting to die
Before this ends up in a 007 movie.
Then a game.
Then, instead of slappers only, you end up with.. binary storage solutions only..
*no sound of impact, it's silenced*
duh nuh nuh nuh... duhhhhnn...
Since when is a "188x119x55mm Alu alloy Hammond enclosure," a common household item?
Here are some more do-it-yourself tutorials about hard disk drive silencing techniques as well as about selfmade cooling techniques. The ideas are ranging from an acoustic cabinet, switching off the HDD when not in use to cure vibration (the main cause of noise) with some rubber and others.
This isn't the evening news. Unless the only goal of posting this story is to drive traffic to the site with the project, how hard would it have been to put the phrase "gel packs" into the Slashdot story?
I wonder if I could use that for my fans instead?
What kind of household has hammond cases and medical cooling packs? Also, can we be sure to post the followup story where he can't figure out why his hard drives die of overheating?
I simply cut some pipe insulation foam in halves, and rolled both parts around the disk, one near the front side, one near the rear side. I used some electric wire around the foam to hold it in place. Now my 3"5 disk fits perfectly in a 5"25 slot in front of the case's fan, and the foam's thickness prevents it from moving. I can't hear it *at all* now, eventhough it's a SCSI 15k rpm, because the noise from the motor normally conducts through the metal and the fixations only.
It requires very little material, skills and time to do this, and the disk can be
extracted at any moment without hassle.
Gun
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
Putting it in that box of his will make it fail within a month or two if isn't already on the verge of failure. Then he can go out and buy a Seagate drive. In comparison he is going to think the new drive came DOA because he will barely be able to hear it spin up.
Yeah, see, I was getting tired of hearing my hard drive whine, but rather than dampen the noise coming from it, I decided to drown it out: I had kids.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
So putting them inside your computer might not be a very good idea.
On the other hand, they are non toxic, so if they do leak, at least your computer won't be poisoned. :P
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
So it seems that they just prohibit access to the drive.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Everyone's been talking about head movement and motor noise, but what about bearing noise? it's the most irritating (to me) sound disk drives make, and a drive can operate just fine for years after it starts happening. I'd love for a way to get rid of that, even if I'm not trying to completely silence the whole machine.
Look like someone silenced Justblair's hard drive: the site is down...
Five pound ball peen hard drive silencer.
Apply directly to the hard drive.
Apply directly to the hard drive.
Apply directly to the hard drive.
Repeat until hard drive is silent.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I simply put my server in a closet and was done with it. 4 drives, dual CPU with god knows how many fans (probably too many) - the thing was just way too loud. So in the closet it went.
I wonder, will it come out of the closet? Harharharhar, ahem.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
How about circling the drive a few times with bubble wrap and then shoving it in a 5 1/4 inch bay? Maybe use only 1 inch wide strips of bubble wrap near the front and rear of the drive to allow cooling. I suppose the damping might not be as good as a thin elastic band but you wouldn't have to worry about the elastic drying out.
Forbidden You don't have permission to access /hdsilence.html on this server.
From the uk, over bt-inet.
DAMMIT!!!!!1
Shoot 'em up. Dead drives tell no tales.
Computers with moving parts. How quaint.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I have k6-3 with dual 20G that was driving me nuts. Sat 2ft from me. I took off the outer shell (one piece and fit corrugated boxes parts in the space between the frame and shell. The placed the outer shell back on (tight fit). Silence the unit right up drives and fans. Did have to check that the airflow was good.
1. post story to slashdot
2. watch server burst into flames
3. apply fire extinguisher liberally
4. enjoy perfectly quietened hard drive noises
(there's no "profit" in there... I must've missed a step!)
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Put a low power server in the basement/closet to store things on. Then on your desktops, switch to flash ram (I use CFL and a IDE-to-CFL converter), and finally change out the fan. Even now, I bought to noisy of a fan. I can still hear it. But will buy another one later.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If we are talking about an HTPC why not just make it diskless? That is how mine is setup.
You can boot from the network and keep your OS stored on a server somewhere (probably where your media is stored too). It can be in a completely different room leaving you only fan noise to worry about.
On top of the noise reduction you also save about 15-20W of power for each hard drive you aren't running as well as the reduced heat generation.
A media player shouldn't need high speed disk IO anyways. Even if it is also a recorder it only needs to keep up with realtime TV which isn't that much. A good network should handle it just fine.
The story is mirrored here: Silencing a hard drive
(The pictures couldn't be salvaged from the original story.)
It seems he silenced the webserver as well ;)
My guess is that he used a hammer to silence his harddrive?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Silencing a Hard Drive Using Household Items
I've found a standard ballpeen or claw hammer works well...
A 3 or 5 pound sledge also works, but those aren't typically
household items.
SIGLOST && SIGUNUSED && SIGQUIT
Laugh all you want, you're still using moving particles (e.g. electrons and photons). How quaint.
Why would anyone want a quieter computer? I replaced all my 80's with many 20's strung together just to get a more elaborate whining out of my computer, some I even put a little graphite to dirty the lubricant and get this really awesome, grating noise.
Next I have planned getting one of those old 400k hard drives and having it go through a preset cycle of writing random 1s and 0s to random locations on the disk, I don't want a moment to go by without the chatter of a stepper just'a steppin' around.
Oooo, I have another great idea, I'll mount a bicycle tire on the side of the computer with a motor and stick a card with a clothespin into it, this is going to be an absolute symphony of wailing before I'm done, I'll never get sleep again!
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
http://www.justblair.co.uk.nyud.net/hdsilence.html
kernel: lp0 on fire
I just put my computer in the basement and after buying a super cheap video and usb cable I can run everything from my office totally noise free.
Just show your hard drive a trout wrapped in newspaper and say, "The fan, he won't make no noise no more. He sleeps wid de fishes"
I game, browse, watch movies and listen to music on the computer in blissful noise free environment.
Step 1: Upgrade your keyboard, mouse, etc to usb if they are not already, and your monitors/video to use dvi cables.
Step 2: buy a length of 2" OD pvc pipe, for most people 2 feet or so should be enough, and a cutter for it. Also a hole cutter bit to fit (usually 2 and 1/16") and some sealing caulk.
Step 3: Get cables and usb hubs as needed.
Step 4: Drill a hole through the wall, fit the pipes in them, and caulk the pipes in place. Run cables through the wall from the computers to your workstation. For the last little bit get a bit of foam and stuff it in to insulate/noise seal the pipes. One of the above pipes I have 2 DVI cables, 2 usb, and 2 5.1 cable bundles. If I'm doing something requireing a lot of disk changing, I hook up a usb DVD drive to that computer.
I'm planning to do something similar in the living room with my media pc, putting it through the wall into a closet. you have to be careful there that it is somewhere that has good circulation (this one is, the central air intake for the house is in there, through a vented door.)
Total cost of special components, including dvd drive and long DVI cables, $150.
To make it look 'nice', I slapped a couple of standard wall plates over the spots where the pipes are (the duplex style, because I have two holes for 3 pc's+ a cat 5 cable for if I want to set my laptop up in that room).
This isn't for everyone, for example renters, or those living in cement walled houses (though it's not impossible there), but if you can manage it, things are really nice.
(My computers are in a rack mounted in a spare room that looks like just some sort of cabinet, so it doesn't stand out except for the noise it makes)
"Reader Justblair recommends his blog entry detailing how he made a hard drive silencer for a pittance",
No, he doesn't.
Link doesn't work for me...
isn't 7200rpm more like 120hz?
What have the hard drives done to deserve such a horrible fate!? And "silencing" them is just too much. I think they deserve a second chance, whatever they did.
Violence solves nothing, I tell you! And without hard drives we'd still be using cards with holes in them.
People going deaf won't know what the hell I am talking about.
What the hell are you talking about?
Another way to silence machines is to boot off of the network with PXE or a similar technique. We have been doing this with our media machine for about a year now and the only noise from the machine now is the CPU and PSU fans. This ended up reducing the power consumption and noise from the machine drastically, since we could cut out all of the case fans since there's no HDD to cool.
This is fairly easy to do as long as you have a stable file server set up to do NFS and a DHCP server you can add some options into. It is stable enough, we've never had the machine crash because of NFS flaking out or anything (30+ day uptimes easily, ultimately rebooted for other reasons).
You could probably netboot simple workstation machines too, but I haven't bothered trying that with our desktop machines yet, though it might cut out a nice amount of noise. We have System76 Koala mini-PCs, so there's one CPU fan and the hard drive.
Our media machine that we have netbooting is booting a full installation of Ubuntu (Hardy, FWIW) with MythTV frontend and an MPD server set up on it. We haven't noticed any performance issues at all.
Hopefully this provokes some thoughts for someone looking to do the same kind of thing.
Tip for those who don't want to go scouting too far in their quest for silence: Those grey pieces of soft foam that are used to pad most motherboard and graphics card boxes.
Unscrewing the HD and placing it on a surface inside the case with a piece of foam under it decouples it from the case, and eliminates virtually all noise. I first thought to use it as a temporary solution, but it turned out to work so well I didn't need anything else.
Only possible caveat is the heat dissipation, as foam is also a good insulator. I've had the solution for several years with 7200 drives without data loss, so at least in my case the airflow over the open HD top seems to be enough. For 10 000 rpm drives or especially hot ones I'd consider additional airflow or cooling components.
11/02/08 01:56:22pm CDT Forbidden You don't have permission to access /hdsilence.html on this server.
...and it shall be silent forever!
Ah, so now we know what M.C. was singing about when he said "STOP! Hammertime!"
Am I the only one that doesn't hear all this 'noise' from my PC? And when I use it for a movie, the surround sound system is loud enough that I could never heard the PC.
The best way to silence your HDD is to get slashdotted and have your computer die a horrible death :P
Between the cooling fan on the Nvidia video card, and, the cooling fan on the water cooler...I only have to ask WHAT hard drive noise?
My optical drive is in the lowest 5.25" bay (of three). My 500GB Barracuda sits directly on top of the optical drive, on top of a piece of foam rubber. I have earthed it with a short length of wire going from a screw in its chassis to another screw in the case. Silent, cool, and grounded. I just have to remember that it's not screwed in :-/
I remember reading an article about sanding all the molding marks off the fan blades to cut down noise from turbulence, as well as some other tips. I cannot find that article anymore. Maybe someone knows about it?
Temperature should not be a problem when placed in gel. The gel should do a reasonable job at dissipating the heat - so long as the gel is not an insulator (it probably is not.)
But a bigger concern for me would be how to let air into the drive. The drive heads float on a tiny bit of air - they don't operate in a vacuum. I seam to remember that drives had a tiny hole* (usually covered with a sticker + warning) for air to go in and out of the drive. I assume the sticker acted as a filter. Anyway, when the drive operates it heats up and air escapes from the drive via the hole. When the drive cools off air enters the drive via the hole. Now what if this hole is covered with gel? Over time, more and more gel will get sucked into the drive leading to eventual failure. Or, the sticker blocks the gel and the next time the drive starts up there is insufficient air pressure in the drive and the heads risk scraping along the platter.
Now the original person in question might have compensated for this somehow. I'm just a fool who didn't read the article - unfortunately slashdotted. But I bring up this point to make sure others do not destroy their drives.
*Note that modern drives could very well be different.
Those dumbasses in Redmond can't get it to run on ONE core. I mean can you imagine a 256-Core BSOD?
Pax Vobiscum
I just submerged my PC in water and it's now totally silent. I think it's because water doesn't transmit sound as easily as air. It also stay's quite cool too.
I'm pretty sure I don't have any Hammond enclosures lying around my house. Maybe I'm just not geeky enough.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
The WD Greenpower is a 5400 RPM 3.5" desktop drive with high density platters, and all the low-noise and power-saving features you couild previously only find in a notebook drive. The are also easier to find, and much less expensive than laptop drives.
SPCR reviewed the drive, and found it to be the quietest they ever tested. Further, when you compare it to mainstream "quiet" 7200 RPM drives, the performance hit is only about %10. In all the performance tests I've seen, the Greenpower outperforms my old Barricuda 7200.10, and paces well with
I use the drive in my gaming rig, because my last two drives were too loud. The load times are fine - even Fallout 3 loads in seconds. I also use another one of these drives as external backup for my Mac Mini - good performance, and low noise/heat make this an excellent choice.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
After 20+ years spent sitting near a whirring PC, to me, silence means disaster. I can't even sleep in a silent room any more because any little noise that does happen is like a gunshot going off. Much better is the masking susurrus of white noise from one or more PCs. Annoyed by the sound of a PC? That is the sound of life, of your connection to the Internet. It represents your ability to do anything at all with your PC. How could that bother you unless you're not a wierdo...
PS Slashdot editors... your spelling dictionary is missing a few words here and there huh?