My PC is too loud!

[randombs]

Hey all, just thought I'd throw this out there and see what ideas you guys can come up with.

I've had my Dell Inspiron 530s for a while now and it's a nice and quiet machine under normal circumstances. It had 4gb ram and I'm running Vista 32-bit.

It has two hard drives:

320gb 7200rpm for Windows
750gb 7200rpm for Videos, etc.

The machine is basically my HTPC - it's for playing BR/HDDVD/DVDs and downloaded videos, torrenting, and any other times I need Windows for something (my laptop is a Macbook) and it is hooked up to my telly.

Right now, I've set the hard drive spindown to one minute, and it works but now and then the louder 750gb drive spins up to do something random. The 320gb one isn't too bad when it's spinning so it's less of a big deal to keep running all the time.

The desktop is a slimline one, which means any sort of 5.25" hard drive sound-dampening enclosure will be impossible. The hard drives are held in two 3.5" bays. Each hard drive has two special screws (machine came with one hdd and four screws but I needed two for the extra hdd), and they slide in and click into place, so that they can be removed without a screwdriver.

I'm looking into some sort of rubber screws that I could use that will hopefully help with the vibrations. There's not much room to maneuver so I can't do anything drastic like wrapping a few rubber bands around the hard drives, as they won't fit in when I try.

Ok so here's the questions:

* Does anyone use Linux with their HTPC? I'm wondering if Windows (or maybe my Avast antivirus, or even some other program) simply cannot resist doing things with the hard drives that causes them to keep spinning up and down. I'm thinking along the lines of either dual booting with both Vista and Linux on the first hard drive, or maybe even something hardcore like linux running off a usb stick or something.

* Does anyone have any tips for dampening vibrations while still keeping the hard drive inside a 3.5" bay? Remember, the actual noise isn't the problem so I'm not interested in silencing - it's the vibrations that are driving me mad. The hard drive can be heard throughout the house. I've read that the hard drive enclosure bit acts as a heatsink for the drive and so any sort of material put between the two could cause the hard drive to heat up more than usual. As the case is small to begin with, and the little fans make a loud noise when the temperature increases too much, I'm worried about doing anything major. Having said that, the hard drives aren't really squeezed against the enclosure like how they're screwed into a normal one, they can sort of wobble a bit.


Things to bear in mind:

* Ideally, I'd rather not lose the hard drive as it's big and also quiet when seeking.

* I'm unwilling to replace the machine itself or get a full-width tower to put the bits in, due to space issues.

* I'm not afraid of fiddling and sticking stuff inside there to help with the noise.

* There's no room for an external enclosure to run the 750gb hdd from.

* I've no problems dual-booting with Linux if need be.


Thanks in advance for any replies, or even just throwing up ideas, no matter how crazy they are

[abigsmurf]

If it's really case vibration that's the problem and not the drive itself there's 2 options:

Rubber washers for the hdd screws. Dirt cheap and effective. Should be able to get the right sized ones from either somewhere like ebuyer or a local homebase.

Dynamat Xtreme (and similar products). aluminium panels you stick inside your case to dampen vibrations. Designed for speakers but they're apparently good for vibration noise (but they don't reduce other kinds).

I would advise against using Linux for the HTPC. For one thing you can't play blu rays but I'm not a fan of Linux's media players wither.

[smouty]

Hang the drives from elastic bands or silicon O rings to stop the contact with the case.
Enable acoustic settings if available which may need a DOS utility.

[randombs]

Cheers for the replies, guys.

@ abigsmurf: Yeah, it's not the drive being faulty (it's a brand new warranty replacement from Samsung), it's vibrations. I tried putting rubber bands between the screws and the hard drive but that didn't do anything.

Cheers for the Linux info, I forgot about BR playback! I have Ubuntu on my rarely-used vaio laptop and have had no problems playing any videos on it - it's no different than my Macbook, in that I have to use VLC for pretty much everything. I've been thinking about getting a PS3 Slim to take over BR duties and other stuff, but I'm still in two minds about it. To be honest, BRs take up less than 5% of my overall video watching so I could always just boot back into Vista for the odd film.

@ smouty: I can't hang the drives as the 3.5" bay they go into is quite snug (case has 1x3.5" bay with space for two hard drives, 1x3.5" single bay that holds the card reader, and 1x5.25" bay with the BR/HDDVD drive). I just put about five elastic bands around the drive and stuck it in (no need for screws as the rubber bands keep it in place) and the vibrations are still there. I imagine the rubber bands alone aren't enough. PC Pro magazine use velcro to stick hard drives into the case and said it works a treat and is also very secure, but I wouldn't be able to do that here.

I'm wondering whether to just bite the bullet and get a 5400rpm hard drive (my Macbook has a 7200rpm WD Black hdd and even that vibrates the table! It's not too bad and the speed increase is worth it imo. I could even put that in the PC and stick it somewhere and use my 250gb WD Blue that's in a USB case as my Macbook drive) as it's only really for watching videos from so transfer rate isn't as important as it is with the boot drive (which isn't causing me any grief).

I'm pondering whether to put my old 500gb back in instead of the 750 and just run the Acoustic Management like you said (I've done it before with UBCD), as I think that's more for the actual seek noise than the spinning (which I imagine is fixed).