Drives in my server producing too much vibration

[Leek Soup]

Hi,
I am currently running TrueNAS Core in a HP Z420 workstation. I am using two 10TB Seagate Exos X16 in a mirrored configuration.
The problem is, the drives vibrate substantially when the r/w arm is seeking. The case amplifies these vibrations and results in loud, low frequency, irregular "thumping" noises. This is a problem because in a few months I will be moving into a college dorm and will need to have the server with me, and the noise will prevent me from sleeping.

Do you know of any way to effectively dampen the vibrations? So far I have tried
-Putting rubber grommets between the drive and the caddy (did not work)
-Wrapping the drives in a sound deadening material
The second method did reduce vibration, but it meant the drives had to sit loose without being secured and I was worried that this would damage them in the long run, as well as result in higher drive temperatures.

Another option is to buy quieter/less vibration drives, but I find it difficult to identify what drives would be suitable. People have said that the Seagate Ironwolf (non pro) 8tb is relatively quiet. Do you know of any drives which in your experience produce less vibrations?

To be clear, the overall noise produced by the drives is not the main problem. I don't mind constant, regular noise such as a constant hum. It's the loud, irregular vibrations which get to me.

A weird post I know. Thanks for reading.

 

[oneplane]

Have you considered moving the drives outside of the main case? Assuming SATA it shouldn't be too hard to get a few power and SATA cables out the back of the machine and into a separate caddy. Even a (skanky?) eSATA enclosure would work.

Edit: something like this: USB 3.0 / eSATA Dual SATA HDD Enclosure - External Drive Enclosures | StarTech.com (while that might still resonate it would be much easier to silence it, and because it has a fan, you're not cooking your drives like wrapping it would do)

 

[Leek Soup]

This could be the solution, thank you!

 

[bwahaha]

I will be moving into a college dorm..., and the noise will prevent me from sleeping.

I'd suggest a fan, like a box fan or a large-ish desk fan. The noise should buffer any other obvious sounds, like people snoring, coughing/hacking up a lung at 3am, that one guy that stomps everywhere he goes, the guy who needs music to sleep, the guy who needs music to study, the server's hard disks and fans, etc.

Alternatively, a noise generator, like rain/thunderstorms, waves, static, etc. Imo, these never become part of the ambient noise, not like a fan does, but may work better for some.

Start soonish, and get used to the noise. Make it familiar, and sleeping will be easier when you move. I know it has nothign to do with "quiet the server's drives" but sometimes masking the noises is easier, and yields other benefits. Y'know, two birds and all that.

 

[i386]

-Putting rubber grommets between the drive and the caddy (did not work)

I would expect something like this to reduce noise & vibrations drastically. Are you sure it's the hdds?
I had x16 16tb hhds lying on my desk (running some hdd benchmarks) and there were no noticable vibrations or "seeking" noises

 

[heromode]

i noticed of my 4 14TB Toshiba MG07's, one vibrates much more than the others. It has no errors though, long self test ok, and default ZFS scrub every other sunday is fine after one year of use. But point is it's easy to find out by just putting your finger on the surface of the spinning drives.

 

[Leek Soup]

I'd suggest a fan, like a box fan or a large-ish desk fan. The noise should buffer any other obvious sounds, like people snoring, coughing/hacking up a lung at 3am, that one guy that stomps everywhere he goes, the guy who needs music to sleep, the guy who needs music to study, the server's hard disks and fans, etc.

Alternatively, a noise generator, like rain/thunderstorms, waves, static, etc. Imo, these never become part of the ambient noise, not like a fan does, but may work better for some.

Start soonish, and get used to the noise. Make it familiar, and sleeping will be easier when you move. I know it has nothign to do with "quiet the server's drives" but sometimes masking the noises is easier, and yields other benefits. Y'know, two birds and all that.

Thanks for the advice, yeah I think I will definitely need to get used to sleeping with noise, I do have a speaker I can play some white noise on so hopefully that will help!

 

[Leek Soup]

Are you sure it's the hdds?

Thanks for the reply. I am 100% sure that it's the drives. The noise becomes more regular when doing large file transfers and I can feel the vibrations when I touch them.

 

[Whaaat]

I am 100% sure that it's the drives. The noise becomes more regular when doing large file transfers and I can feel the vibrations when I touch them.

Those helium filled 'over 10TB' drives usually have 8 platters and hence a rather heavy head stack assembly. Moving HSA has a strong recoil which is very hard to dampen. I found this frame useful to some extent due to rubber mounts, it will consume all 3 optical bays of your Z420 though.

 

[Leek Soup]

I ended up using one of these to solve this problem. This did not silence the noise entirely, so I placed the brackets on some vibration dampening material inside the case. This combination has made the hard drives inaudible below the white noise produced by the fans of the server. Definitely not a perfect solution, but it works.