My system is housed in an Antec P-182 noise deadening case. Works pretty well, actually. I have 5 SCSI drives in this box and some of them are old and noisy.

Just a couple of days ago I cycled out a 12 year old Quantum 9.1 Gig drive, because it was big (took two drive bays) and slow and sucked power and generated heat, and was only 9.1 gig. Oh yes. It was noisy too. I replaced it with a Hitachi 147 Gig 10,000 RPM LVD SCSI drive.

The system is now a lot quieter...except...

There is this 18 Gig IBM Ultrastar 15K drive in the system, and it is singing, emitting a constant tone at some fraction (I suppose) of the spindle speed. It must be around 5000-7500 hertz, and this tone is driving me mad. It has been there all along, I suppose, but it was kind of lost in the noise from the Quantum drive. Now that that drive is gone, this tone remains and drives me nuts.

I opened the case, and put a baffle in. This baffle is just a piece of paper that I moved forward and backward in the case until I found an antinode for the sound, then fastened the paper in place. I don't think it will interfere thermally and it cut the singing by several dBs - a very noticeable improvement. I also gained a bit by hanging a cloth "curtain" inside the front door by where the fan that cools this hard drive is. This soft surface seems to absorb a bit of the sound.

So I have reduced the noise by several dBs, but I can still hear it quite well and it is bothering me. I have created a sort of box out of styrofoam and cardboard, and built this up around the computer, and this gets the noise down to a bearable level, but this "solution" is unacceptable for several reasons - including thermal; this "box" around the computer is causing things to run warmer.

I have been having some problems in the recent past with tinnitis, and as I think about it I suspect my exposure for extended periods to this tone is the cause. So, for several reasons, I have to stop it.

Does anyone have any ideas? I just replaced 2 drives in this system - one failed, and I decided when I purchased to get two drives and remove the Quantum as well. If I have to, I guess I can buy a third drive but these SCSI drives are really expensive and I would prefer to not do this if I can avoid it.

Other than this tone, the sound from the box is a quiet fan sound (there are a lot of fans in it), which is perfectly acceptable to me

can you mount the drive on rubber washers or o-rings? if you can keep the vibrations from geting to the case it should quiet down a bit.

jiml8,

The easiest solution for you to do is to remove the noisy drive.

You just replaced two small HDs with two much larger HDs, so you have gained lots of new HD space. Copy the contents from the noisy drive (it's a small drive at only 18 GB in size) to one of the new drives, and then remove the noisy drive from your system.

Well...for now, I have spun the thing down. Removing it is an option, but there are reasons I prefer to not do that. But I have to stop the sound. Just have to.

What reasons? (Just being curious).

If you think you'll miss it after you remove it, place it on your nightstand for a while. When it becomes nothing more than a paperweight to you, toss it.

I have an idea, rip all the drives out of there, donate them to a local museum and buy a 1 TB drive.

Anyone have a thread or a link that compares throughput between SATA vs SCSI?

Many throughputs are listed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths

I've personally never liked SCSI drives and don't see many benefits, I mean they're (very) expensive, (very) noisy, (very) hot (as in generate lots of heat), (very) overrated. What's not to like ?

well, I think you could place box in another room. Or place noisy drive outside of box within something sound-proof. But there is a problem that everything (I can think of) that blocks sound also causes overheating, so the drive will overheat. (theoretically you could place drive in some kind of vacuum box, but there will be lack of air flow, etc.). So the best thing will be to move noisy drive far away from you, whether it is connected to computer or not.

Use noise dampening chassis mats?