Any way to muffle a whiny HD?

[Chaos_Being]

I recently replaced some really noisy case fans with nice quiet ones (no more than 25dba per fan for 3 of them, 21dba for the other two.)

The problem is now, there is a persistent high pitched whine that I can constantly hear coming from my case. I thought it was the little fan on my northbridge at first, but when I opened up my case to take a good listen it quickly became obvious that it was my hard drive. I guess the whine was always there, it was just drowned out before.

I'd like to know if there is any method of quieting that noise down- its not that its very loud, but the pitch is high enough that it cuts right through my head I'm using a 120gb Western Digital, 7200rpm 8mb cache drive- model WD1200JB.

Thanks.

 

[Ri0]

Buy a new one...

Sorry, but that is what I ended up doing. It drove me crazy after some time and I couldn't take it.

 

[Drec]

soundproof your case

 

[Chaos_Being]

Bleh, as I thought

 

[Chaos_Being]

Actually, Ri0 what type did you purchase? I'm curious to see what manufacturer may make quieter drives than WD.

Not that I can really get a hard drive now, but it would be nice to know for my next one.

 

[SniperXX]

I bought a seagate and it was really quiet. Also, I recently bought a new WD and its much quieter than my old 40GB WD and my 60GB IBM. The IBM was by far the worst.

 

[Highlander]

had the same issue with my WD, the 120gb version as well. Got sick of it so purchased a silentdrive enclosure for it, hey presto no more whine lovely Its ~ the same noise level as a 'cuda which is nice.
Samsung make quiet drives, just got a spinpoint and its silent

 

[Grimdeath]

As the bearing start to wear they start to make noise. IMHO, Maxtors are one of the quietest out there, but given enough time, they will begin to make noise as does mine which I just replaced after 3 years.

 

[Chaos_Being]

Got sick of it so purchased a silentdrive enclosure for it, hey presto no more whine lovely

Ooh, where did you buy that and how much?

The only other hard drives I've had are maxtors, but they're all really old and loud as heck- the newer drives I've installed in other people's computers I"ve noticed are very quiet. I have a WD in my pc right now mainly because it was a good price, had some good reviews and I wanted to try that brand out. It may have not been this noisy a year ago, no way to tell.

 

[Snipester]

Me and my brother both have 120gb WD drives. My brothers is whiney and mine is not... It must be because of their building process that causes variations in noise.

Seagate comes to mind when u want quiet drives but do not expect ground shattering performance.

 

[Chaos_Being]

Highlander, by a silent drive enclosure do you mean something like this? http://www.svc.com/hddsil-22.html

 

[trip0d]

i would like to know what hdd silencer as well..i have the same drive as you chaos and its a high pitch whirring noise..plus i have my other 120gb same model in my external enclosure..WOW does that amplify the noise...

 

[Como]

i'm making my own right now...i have 3 old SCSI cdrom enclosures made of solid aluminum, i've hollwed one out and i'm looking to suspend the hard drive inside of it...hope it works, my hard drives will drive me nuts when i finally get WC..i can already hear them.

 

[Chaos_Being]

Actually I just installed a Seagate drive for a client earlier this week- it was dead silent. I need more HD space soon anyways, so I'll probably just buy one, and maybe migrate my noisy drive to my server.