We have an old Dell here with a 1.7gb HDD that was WHINY!!! It was loud and obnoxious. I got so many complaints about it, I decided I had to soundproof the drive someway. It was early, and I was really creative and inventive that day.
I ended up creating a rather effective hard drive cooler/silencer. I'm gonna write an article up about it, and some pics since the Dell has just been retired so I can take the cooler out. It'll get some laughs, but its effectiveness is quite surprising!
Now, the 1.3gb drive doesn't get too hot, but some of these newer drives sure do...and we all know heat is bad, so some sore of HDD cooling is good. Best thing to do is mount the drive in a 5.25 slot with the brackets, and get some good airflow around it. I don't think theres much of a ponit to attaching small heatsinks all over the drive...I'm sure it'd help, but I doubt its necessary...just some good airflow can go al ong way in cooling a HDD.
Since I mentioned it, I'll have to get to work on explaining that hdd cooler/silencer this weekend!
Mike