HDD Silencer Frame

The Backstory

It seems like HDDs are basically relegated to an afterthought in modern case design. Most cases have a maximum of 2 bays and the ones that have more are ugly as sin and/or cost a ton. So I decided to just get a huge case. WIth the rest of the guts installed, I started building up my storage capacity, starting with 2 x 8TB SAS refurbished enterprise drives. Installed at the bottom bays of my Fractal Design Epoch XL all appeared good until I turned the system on.

At first it didn't really bother me, but over the course of a few days, I really started noticing the hum coming from the spindles of the drives. It's a** low, constant hum that travels far**, and I could even feel it with my bare feet when I step on the hardwood floor next to the tower case. To their credit, Fractal had done some effort in noise insulation, by kitting out the drive sleds with some silicone grommets and shoulder bolts, but that just wasn't cutting it for me.

Then I scored a sweet deal for two more drives and I realized that the theoretical need for a new mounting solution is now a pressing practical requirement, since I literally didn't have any place to put two more drives in my 57 liter case.

Two birds, one stone: I looked around the internet for mounting options, but I didn't like any of them - most seem to be focused on the highest possible density or were crude and blocked airflow. Often both.

Fusion it is. I decided to go with a bungee style suspension, because I had played around with soft mounts in my teenage years and they seemed to work well, plus I already sort of knew how the typical solutions performed. It took me 4 iterations of the design to get to this point, but I'm really happy with how they turned out.

Performance

The first time I started the machine with all 4 HDDs installed in the cages it was almost profound. You know that feeling of relief you get when you turn off a fan that's been droning on all day, or when the dishwasher finishes it's noisy, dirty business it's been doing for 4 hours? Yeah. That. It was amazing. I was basically walking around with my mouth open, struggling to believe I'll never have to hear/feel this again.

It was not easy to install all cages (2x2) in the small bay at the bottom of my case, but they did eventually fit. The difference is profound. I'm currently reslivering the whole ZFS pool and I can't hear a thing. The head seek noise is minimal and the spindle hum is gone.

If your machine is in a living space where you have to spend a lot of time, this is just a treat.

You can print this straight from MakerWorld, or grab the files from here. I've included both Fusion and STLs.