I finally got round to looking at doing something about the noise that this device makes.
I found (as someone else has pointed out) that although the fan is noisy, most of the noise actually comes from the hard disk. Mine has a WD Caviar drive, and I noticed this on their website whilst looking for acoustic management tools:
"Western Digital does not provide software that will change the Acoustic Management settings on Western Digital hard drives.
If you have an Intel chipset based motherboard listed in Answer ID 1004, you can use a program called the Intel Application Accelerator to change the Acoustic Management settings for our hard drives. This utility can be downloaded and installed from Intel's web site.
IMPORTANT: Western Digital does not support third party utilities that change firmware values on our hard drives. It is recommended that any data on your hard drive be backed up before using such software."
Unfortunately, I don't have a PC with a compatible chipset (one of these: 810, 810E, 810E2, 810L, 815, 815EP, 815G, 815EG, 815P, 820, 820E, 840, 845, 845E, 845G, 845GE, 845GL, 845GV, 845PE, 850, 850E, 860). I wondered whether anyone else might want to try this to see if it helps ?
In the meantime my solution to the noise problem has been to both disconnect the cooling fan and to install the hard disk in one of these:
http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/pro...ns/quiet-drive
I did it by reversing the drive so that the connections face the rear of the box, extending the power cable using an adapter from a PC. One block of foam needs to be removed from the enclosure so that the disk connector can be accomodated inside it.
This has removed most of the noise, but its far from ideal otherwise and I am going to have to keep a close eye on the temperatures, but as I only use the box for recording the odd cable program or for archiving recordings from my toppy to dvd I should be ok.
Last edited by Cobson : 16-08-2006 at 10:11
I found (as someone else has pointed out) that although the fan is noisy, most of the noise actually comes from the hard disk. Mine has a WD Caviar drive, and I noticed this on their website whilst looking for acoustic management tools:
"Western Digital does not provide software that will change the Acoustic Management settings on Western Digital hard drives.
If you have an Intel chipset based motherboard listed in Answer ID 1004, you can use a program called the Intel Application Accelerator to change the Acoustic Management settings for our hard drives. This utility can be downloaded and installed from Intel's web site.
IMPORTANT: Western Digital does not support third party utilities that change firmware values on our hard drives. It is recommended that any data on your hard drive be backed up before using such software."
Unfortunately, I don't have a PC with a compatible chipset (one of these: 810, 810E, 810E2, 810L, 815, 815EP, 815G, 815EG, 815P, 820, 820E, 840, 845, 845E, 845G, 845GE, 845GL, 845GV, 845PE, 850, 850E, 860). I wondered whether anyone else might want to try this to see if it helps ?
In the meantime my solution to the noise problem has been to both disconnect the cooling fan and to install the hard disk in one of these:
http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/pro...ns/quiet-drive
I did it by reversing the drive so that the connections face the rear of the box, extending the power cable using an adapter from a PC. One block of foam needs to be removed from the enclosure so that the disk connector can be accomodated inside it.
This has removed most of the noise, but its far from ideal otherwise and I am going to have to keep a close eye on the temperatures, but as I only use the box for recording the odd cable program or for archiving recordings from my toppy to dvd I should be ok.
Last edited by Cobson : 16-08-2006 at 10:11
