rubber bands - good or bad?

[bwanaaa]

everyone has seen how rubber bands and pencils can be used to suspend 3.5" hard drives in a 5.25" bay. Eliminates transmitted vibration. Thing is-the drive is very 'bouncy'. Give it a little nudge and it will oscillate for quite some time. There is no damping. Is this bad for hard drives? When the head is moving back and forth, will irregular, undamped, rapid oscillations of the drive cause a crash?

[Jon]

I wouldn't do it. In my opinion, if the purpose of a contraption like that is to absorb vibrations, then there should be no movement in the drive. The rubber bands should be at a tension that only equalizes (absorbs) the amount of vibration without causing a gyration effect. I would look into rubber/teflon screws or shock-absorbing washers. Even using springs on regular screws I would think would serve a better purpose. Place the spring between the drive cage and drive then lightly tighten, leaving the tension of the spring to hold the drive in place, but not too firmly. Should work well without having to worry about dry rotting rubber bands due to the excessive heat within a case.

[JTanczos]

I completely agree. Even without heat the rubber bands will dry out rather quickly and break. You dont want to surfing the forums, hear a thud, and then see a BSOD.

Definitly find some material that is rated for many years use without dry rotting. I seen some people use hair ties because those are usually fabric covered. Even if the bands fail you still have something to hold it up.

JT

[Sonny]

Something that’s actually close to car suspension:cool:

You’re actually going to want to use something that is not efficient in terms of releasing the kinetic energy it stores from the drive's vibration. The movement you are seeing is because the rubber bands are very efficient at absorbing & releasing this energy the same way it was applied.

What you want is some sort of material that would absorb then dampen the energy just like a car's shock absorber/damper which uses its rebound dampening to slow down the spring oscillation to stop the car from bouncing around. Rebound because it is attenuating the spring’s return force which allows whatever sort of energy to be absorbed but not returned which to us feels like it’s a better ride.

[Veland]

I've been using a similar system for years now. The rubber bands are really thick and it's a product designed for reducing HD noise, but works exactly like the rubber band thing.

I've also tried something similar to rubber mounts used in cars (disc with threaded rod->rubber->disc with threaded rod) but that rubber wasn't soft enough to take the vibrations away

My take on the whole idea? Make sure the rubber bands can take the strain, if unsure, change them occasionally. Make sure the bands are somewhat stiff. Too soft and there's no damping of the vibrations and it will start moving around a lot...

[hibner]

bad idea on the rubber bands for all the reasons already stated. Use bungee cords (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article109-page1.html) instead.

[SolidxSnake]

Stretch Magic is good too.

[SavageBasher]

Zip ties also work. :D

[P4mustangtime]

bad idea on the rubber bands for all the reasons already stated. Use bungee cords (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article109-page1.html) instead.

That link actually makes a fantasting read about bungee cords...it do look like it'd work in reducing noises. But for me, it doesn't matter at this point...I barely hear my current HD drives running in my case, so it's fine for me.

[threeme2189]

why not put the drive down on a blob of silly putty? lol jk.

[Shadowknight281]

Put the drive on the bottom of the case resting on a piece of foam, problem solved. Just make sure you have good airflow in the front as the drive temps usually shoot up with this method.

[Cobalt]

I have some shock absorber lego peices that might actually be useful for this kind of thing. I'd just have to work out a retention system to keep them in place.

[Webzta]

case came with these rubber bits where you place the hdd's, they work pretty nicely..

[Sonny]

Funny how things go, I guess people still have a hard time understanding the dampening part:)

[bwanaaa]

well, I settled on silicone ( not silli-putty ). I squeezed out a tube between 2 pieces of glass separated by thick washers. The resulting quarter inch slab of silicone took three days to dry. Afterwards I cut it into little squares to act as washers. The hard drive support consists of home depot angle brackets. The bolts to fasten the angle brackets to the hard drive are 6-32 thread and quarter inch long. The bolt is insulated from the angle bracket by a piece of silicone tubing (fuel line tubing for model air planes). The home made silicone washers sit between the angle bracket and the hard drive.

[Sonny]

That's a great idea:beer: How about some pics? It would be interesting to see your work.

[BomberBear]

the rubber bands would work as long as you had them pulling 'against' eachother. As in a rubber band pulling down and pulling up at the same spot. The force needed to strech a rubber band is pretty uniform (i.e. same force needed to strech from relaxed to 10 cm as 10 cm to 20 cm) so that would be another good reason. But yeah, they wouldn't last very long.

The way you ended up setting it up sounds nice.

[Cjwinnit]

Should work well without having to worry about dry rotting rubber bands due to the excessive heat within a case.

Yep, this is a big problem. In a 5.25" drive bay with no cover, 4 rubber bands holding a hard disk in clement weather last about a month before the bands fail.

For the supporters of full ghetto computers who happen to live on the outskirts of London, postmen often leave the red rubber bands that the Royal Mail use to bundle post together scattered around the streets of London. They happen to be just the right size.