Hard Drive is Blowing My Ear Drums...

[brandon184]

Okay, so maybe I just wanted your attention, but here's the problem...

I'm "restoring" an old Dell I've got here, so it can be put to use, and after working with it for a while, I've noticed that when the hard drive is accessing, it is annoyingly loud.

What would be some good techniques to dampen the sound?

- Brandon

[Rat]

Rip it out and throw it in the dumpster http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
(sorry, couldn't resist)
What kind of noises does it make? Possible it's on it's way out or just an old noisey type? There prolly isn't much you can do about quieting it up without making things warm inside the case. There was a thread on putting noise dampening material on the inside of a case to quiet things a bit, I'll try to find hat thread for ya.

Rat...

[brandon184]

It's always been a noisy drive. There's nothing wrong with it, its just naturally noisy.

I know the old technique of applying sound dampening foam, but I'm wondering if anyone else has some creative solutions to a problem like this.

[Fudge]

Have you tried putting the whole box in another room?

Ha ha! Sorry...but if thats the way it is then thats the way it is...unless, like you said, you line the inside of the covers with a thin foam rubber or something. I'm assuming it's an "older" system so heat shouldn't be a huge factor.
One other small tip is, under device manager (assuming yer running Windoze), under performance tab, file system, change typical role to Network server. This won't dampen the sound but it'll access the harddrive alot less so it's not AS annoying.

Good Luck...Fudge

[brandon184]

^

[big_block_buick]

hey brandon,you dont say what kind of sound you think it is,internal drive noise,to which i have no input whatsoever..but when i just put my box together the drive bays are like tin,and when i fired it up for the first time it rattled like crazy,so i put some strips of cigarette box cardboard in between...quieted it down by at least 50%..but you already touched on that one ..good luck

[NDC]

If the the sound is something that is being produced internally by the mechanism, I dont think there's much that can be done. Some drives just seem to be louder than others when the disk is accessed. Such as the old Samsung hard drives, those suckers sound like a woodpecker when the drive is being accessed. As for noises due to severe vibration causing the internal case frame to rattle, I suppose you can put some hard drive dampners to reduce the noise....

[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 12-28-2000).]

[BFlurie]

When exactly does it do it? All the time, or mostly at bootup? My old Dell w/a WD would "buzz" at startup when I installed an Intel IDE driver in place of the Windoz generic. Seemed like it was "installing" new hardware during each reboot.

[brandon184]

This is the hard drives' NATURAL noise, thus, it does this pretty much all the time.

- Brandon

[NDC]

Looks like you may just have to learn to live with it then.