Sound Proof Your Hard Drive

Test Details

We used a Western Digital WD740 Raptor for testing, which as mentioned earlier is one of the hottest-running 3.5” hard drives produced. Although it’s an outdated model, it is well-suited for these tests: if the 3RSystem case and the GUP drive silencer manage to keep this drive cool, they will be able to handle almost any other drive.

Noise Measurements

We measured noise in three different setups:

1. Acoustic measurement of an individual WD740 Raptor drive. We positioned the drive on four small pieces of Styrofoam board, to prevent vibrations from reaching the test board.
2. We installed the WD740 drive into the middle bay of the hard drive cage of 3RSystem’s L-1100 T.REX case, and measured noise from the same distance and angle as we did with the individual drive, but outside of the closed L-1100 case. We used both system fans to keep the drive cool, but did not install a power supply for this test.
3. We installed the WD740 drive into the Smart Drive Neo and placed it on the same test board that we used for the hard drive.

All noise measurements were made exactly 70 cm to the left of the hard drive setups, regardless of what else was in between, such as the case or the HDD silencer.

Temperature Measurements

We ran temperature tests on the drive laying on the test bench, inside the 3RSystem L-1100 T.REX case, and inside the GUP Smart Drive Neo. First, we executed IOmeter’s database test, which typically stresses a drive rather well. After a period of 45 minutes, we used Everest 4.6 to read the hard drive’s SMART sensor values to determine temperature.