Yes, yours truly balks even at the noise of a 2.5" drive. Want to know if there's something that'll insulate the noise that won't flambe the hard disk in the process. USB3-SATAIII interface a major plus. Failing that, USB3-SATAII.
The best you can do is dampen the vibration from the hard drive using a piece of neoprene or similar. Unfortunately, noise isolation is difficult without actually insulating, which would likely reduce the hard drive's useful life.
I suppose I could buy a 3.5" enclosure and put some foam on the insides without blocking the enclosure vents. Or maybe just buy a 1Tb SSD. Would seem to be the simpler option. Really not a fan of the combined whine and the whirr when it's in the 2.5" plastic enclosure - my entire gaming rig is quieter in idle than that single drive when it's sitting on the desk in the existing case.
It's not so much noise of the drive, but the vibration of the enclosure on the desk. So stick something between the enclosure and the desk like a piece of packaging foam and your problems will be solved.
No it's not. I already have the existing enclosure on sorbothane pods and stood upright (though it wasn't designed to do that, which makes it slightly precarious but at the same time, that gives it less transfer surface area). It's the rotational noise and the motor whine. I've also established that it's a fairly median drive in terms of 2.5" noise, which is why I'm asking for a generically noise-reducing enclosure.
not externally to my knowledge, you could get youself something like the Syche Quietdrive http://www.scythe-eu.com/en/products/hdd-cooler/quiet-drive-hdd-noiseless-case.html tear the PCB out of your external put the drive + pcb inside the quiet drive ( if it will fit ) then presto, you have a great quiet drive downsides are its abit weighty and attracts fingerprints like you would not believe
Most silencers are for 3.5" drives, but I could find two options for a 2.5" drive: http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/hdd/008/sqd251000_detail.html http://www.quietpc.com/smartdrive-proof25 Unfortunately the former doesn't seem to be available in this country and the latter doesn't seem to be available at all. If you could get hold of the Scythe (from Europe maybe?) then it looks like it converts a 2.5" drive to 3.5" dimensions, so you might be able to put it in a standard 3.5" USB3 drive enclosure. Apparently you can even put the 2.5" silencer inside a 3.5" silencer for ultimate noise reduction You might be better off just getting a quiet 3.5" drive though. It depends on how loud the 2.5" drive is and how effective the silencer is, since the silenced 2.5" will take up the same amount of space as a 3.5" drive and the silencer itself isn't cheap
If you press down the enclosure does it get any quieter? Even with sorbothane pods attached; it might still be too light not to vibrate across the desk like a angry washing machine. I do understand the annoying noise you've got even if the vibration is solved, but when it comes to 2.5in drives portability is key, and not acoustics especially when it comes to externals. With the shift to solidstate occuring, I doubt anyone is developing anything remotely close to what you require, so I think it's time to go homebrew!
^ Already have a server, not the point It's only second drive on an iMac so that I can turn off the Thunderbolt DAS (which itself makes a racket despite being fanless) when I don't need the bigger volume of data in the DAS - the iMac only has a terabyte of SSD storage so it's kind of useless by itself, especially as I have it split 50:50 OSX/Win. I've already tried putting the drive in an Icy Dock 3.5" carrier and into an alloy Icy dock case, but it didn't make a whole lot of difference. And it is definitely more silent than any 3.5" drive - the two 3.5" (and known relatively quiet 3.5" HDD's) in the DAS are too noisy to have constantly going, which is why the 2.5" drive is used when I don't need the data on the DAS. The iMac suffers from the same form over function issue as will the new Pro in that while Apple may advertise the unit itself as silent in class once you actually start making it a useful PC it's actually noisier and a messier sprawl than anything else half decent (as well as the silent thing only being achieved because it is flambeing the CPU/GPU), so it's already a workaround. I don't really want to start getting into workarounds of workarounds so just wanted a decent silencing enclosure - not a hogdepodge of bits. I guess I'll probably end up going for an SSD as I suspected I'd have to.
Discontinued, as it happens... However on a totally different note, I was leafing thru that Ultra section and the Scythe footswitch might come in useful, if I can tie it into Asus AI Suite somehow...
