dragosmp

Hey, here are some pics, but as I said the case is very crowded.

View from the rear of the HDDs: you can see the 80mm fan and on the right the 4 elastic stripes (2 for each HDD) - on the left they are hidden by the fan, but they are ever so slightly visible:



This is a view with the side panel opened with the knots and the other points where I hung up the elastic bands:




This was meant to be a view from the connector's perspective, but the BigTyphoon really obstructs any angle so this is what I came up with:




The Zalman MFC1 fan controller which turns my 6 fans (all except the PSU and VID card) ended up just above the HDDs because of lack of space. For now it works, cool'n quiet :P but in the future I plan a bigger case.

This mod should be more effective in well ventilated cases like Mastertrixer's Antec Ninehundred where, as he says, the temp of the HDDs actually went down after the mod. The truth is a 5.25" bay is more easily ventilated than a 3.5" bay, so as long as you have the free spots it should be fine.

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My guides:
How to: Silence any HDD with 1$
Driver modd: SB Live! and Audigy Value/SE/LE/24bit in X-fi Xtreme Audio
Driver modd: enable Crystalizer and X-Fi console on Audigy EMU cards

The Llama

Is there any way this can be dangerous for the HDD? The first thing I think of is this:
The drive is pretty idle, and then all at once it speeds up to full speed... this has the motor trying to work against a stationary object to push the platters in a direction. However, the object is no longer stationary (it's suspended by elastic), so the HDD itself is pushed back a little as the platters spin up. I'm not sure of the physics, but this can't be super good for the drive motor.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

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bruestle2

This won't hurt the motor, however it would take some of the energy out from the platters. The motor would have to work slightly harder to get the drive up to speed.
What i am concerned about is the hard drives just falling out. Like if you need to transport your case or you happen to bump it really hard, what would keep the drives from falling out. I guess if you include another set of bands going in the perpendicular direction this would keep the drives from sliding out.

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dragosmp

The inertial momentum that appears when a drive moves from the "idle" position to the "load" position (if such positions actually exist) is directly proportional to the plater's plus the rotor's mass. Normally as you said, this inertia would transmit to the case through the fixations of the hard drive. However, even if the hard drive wouldn't be fixed any more (at all - suspended in thin air) the inertial momentum would be proportional to the rapport between the mass of the hard drive in total and the platter's mass. Som' like this:
Ihdd=Iplatters*Mplatters/Mhdd where I is the Inertia and M the Mass

You can see that if such accelerations, even if they would exist they are very very ... unimportant.

The problem I identified though is that HDDs heat up more, that's why the optional fan. I use them with a real slow moving fan, but the difference in temperature can be felt even with the "finger test".


You have a point, but it is actually in favor of the rubber fixation system. Come to think of it, say you have a case and the HDD is fixed with screws, classical way. The case with all there is inside of it (HDD included) hits the floor with the same accelerations, thus the same shock. It's like dropping the HDD on the floor altogether, the case doesn't protect one bit.
Now with the rubber fixations, even if swings so much as to touch the 5.25" sides, the rubber bands would still absorb part of the acceleration, thus the force of the impact (Force=Mass*Acceleration). It's the same system as the passive security in cars, they allow a slight deformation so that the ****pit would not support the same negative acceleration.
However if it would jump off the rubber fixation and fall all over the case, that would be bad no doubt about it. Still, looking at my rubber bands, they're very tight, I find hard to believe they would let the HHDs go The band perpendicular to the side of the HDD on the SATA connector side, and the opposite would clearly remove any potential issue.

__________________
Mini-ITX Acrylic Pyramid - check it out

My guides:
How to: Silence any HDD with 1$
Driver modd: SB Live! and Audigy Value/SE/LE/24bit in X-fi Xtreme Audio
Driver modd: enable Crystalizer and X-Fi console on Audigy EMU cards

TestECull

The motor has to apply this torque regardless, so it won't hurt anything..the read head's more likely to crash into the platters than the motor to fail because of the minisculely increased torque twist...plus, ittl look damn cool watching your HDD's twist when they spin up :P


Heh, for some reason my HDD's don't make noise when they seek...but my D: drive keeps idling down and spinning back up...and I'm too lazy to turn that off :P

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Shingetsu

To lazy to do this mod?

Antec has got you covered.

DanNEBTD

lazy is my middle name . .

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ericeod

The infimous rubberband mod! The easiest way is to pass the industrial strength rubberband through the mounting hole and the slide a toothbick, or if there is room, a pencil into the loop on the outside of the drive cage:

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The Llama

Thanks for the replies. I was just curious. Maybe I'll try it on one of my builds.

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A simile is like a metaphor.

Blindeye_03

Thats funny... I built my dad a computer w/ my spare parts when I upgraded last time. His new case had elastic bands to mount the harddrives. I cant remember if I did that or screwed them into the drive bays w/ rubber grommets and screws.