Okay, before anyone smart makes the comment, I'll note that it is quite obvious that one way you can make your HR20 virtually silent is to unplug it and put it in the garage. But that would defeat the purpose.
Anyway, I've had my fair share of beefs with the HR20 beast, one of which is that it is noisy as heck. The primary culprit is the hard drive, both seeks and idle noise. (Seek noise is that bright "popping" or "chirping" that you hear. Idle is the fan-like whine. Both are annoying.) Another way the hard drive makes noise is that it vibrates and those vibrations cascade throughout your cabinet. The vibrations will resonate more in some cabinets than others, but it almost none can an HR20 be truly silent -- at least out of the box.
I had some time tonight to play around with my mostly unused HR20. Even though I don't use it, it's normally on, and the constant chiriping and whine was getting on my nerves.
I knew about the eSATA option and hoped that by plugging a quiet hard drive (more on that later) into it, the unit would be smart enough to power done the stock Seagate inside the box. Alas, it didn't. On the bright side, seek noise disappeared. But the idle noise was as bad as ever. Not enough of an improvement to justify eSATA on noise alone.
So I decided to open up the box and unplugged three simple cables. The red sata cable connecting into the hard drive, the black sata power cable next to it (which is connected to the mainboard) and the two-pin fan connector. I knew that the unit would make almost zero noise by doing this; I just wasn't sure if the unit would freak out and refuse to start up. Fortunately, it overlooked the unplugged hard drive and fan and booted up quite normally.
Sweetness! Now the HR20 makes almost zero noise aside from the hard drive I have attached via eSATA and a slight bit of electrical noise coming from the power supply (at least that's my guess).
I am going to have to monitor the unit to make sure temperatures don't get to high now that I have unplugged the fan, but the orientation of the fan leads me to believe that it was only there for the hard drive which was the major temperature polluter. It doesn't seem like there is a very hot CPU in this box so I'm thinking that passive cooling will work.
You're probably wondering how I make the HR20 silent by doing all this. After all, I'm just trading out one hard drive for another. Shouldn't they both be noisy?
The answer is not all hard drives are created equally -- and not all hard drive enclosures or mounting methods are either. For starters, Seagate hard drives have a reputation for having decent idle noise but pretty loud seeks, partly because they don't support a feature called automatic acoustic management. Secondly, these particular Seagates seem to have louder idle noise than the ones I'm used to (but not much louder). Finally, they don't seem to be mounted particularly well in this case. To be fair, it's pretty hard to mount hard drives well in such a small space. But they seem to have done the worst possible job of it, mounting the drive up front. Probably they do that for thermal reasons, but the mounting still sucks.
Anyway, I used a western digital 500 se16. This is one of the quiet 3.5" HDs on the market. Much quieter than Seagates. Moreover, I enclosed it in a noise reducing enclosure made by Scythe (you can get it for under $30 at newegg). The enclosure eliminates almost all of the drive's seek noise and a lot of the idle noise. It doesn't get rid of the vibration though, so I simply placed the drive on a piece of bubble wrap.
Note that this enclosure is designed to be used inside a PC, so I had to bring my own power, which I did from an OKGEAR eSATA enclosure.
Now if you follow this method, you can both increase capacity and lower noise all in one step. But if you just want to lower noise, you can probably get adventurous and remove the seagate from inside the HR20 and put it in a Scythe enclosure. You'll still hear some seeks, but it will be much much quieter. All for about $30. (I'd proabbly recommend leaving the case cracked open and getting power for the drive from the HR20 itself using a molex extension cable.
If you do decide to get a drive, I highly recommend the Samsung 501LJ. It's 500 gigs and only $150 at newegg and it is the quietest 3.5" hard drive I have ever heard or seen. I'm actually in the process of setting up 6 of them in a RAID for my HTPC. I never thought I'd find a hard drive quiet enough to put in the same room as my TV, but I think the Sammy qualifies. I'm pretty confident that if you get a Sammy with a $30 eSATA enclosure (comes with its onw power supply) you wouldn't even need the Scythe enclosure. Just put it ona piece of bubble wrap near the case and presto -- it's all quiet.
Also, I should point out that I actually OWN my HR20. Somehow I got lucky and 2 of the 3 HR20s I have I own, despite having paid a total of $200. You are definitely violating your lease and voiding the warranty by doing this. You should not do this if you have never worked inside a PC before. But as long as you know what a sata cable is and what a molex to sata power converter is, you should be more than fine.
You've been warned. But the rewards are worth it. Silence from your DVR while watching a good movie on HBO-HD --- well, that's priceless.
Anyway, I've had my fair share of beefs with the HR20 beast, one of which is that it is noisy as heck. The primary culprit is the hard drive, both seeks and idle noise. (Seek noise is that bright "popping" or "chirping" that you hear. Idle is the fan-like whine. Both are annoying.) Another way the hard drive makes noise is that it vibrates and those vibrations cascade throughout your cabinet. The vibrations will resonate more in some cabinets than others, but it almost none can an HR20 be truly silent -- at least out of the box.
I had some time tonight to play around with my mostly unused HR20. Even though I don't use it, it's normally on, and the constant chiriping and whine was getting on my nerves.
I knew about the eSATA option and hoped that by plugging a quiet hard drive (more on that later) into it, the unit would be smart enough to power done the stock Seagate inside the box. Alas, it didn't. On the bright side, seek noise disappeared. But the idle noise was as bad as ever. Not enough of an improvement to justify eSATA on noise alone.
So I decided to open up the box and unplugged three simple cables. The red sata cable connecting into the hard drive, the black sata power cable next to it (which is connected to the mainboard) and the two-pin fan connector. I knew that the unit would make almost zero noise by doing this; I just wasn't sure if the unit would freak out and refuse to start up. Fortunately, it overlooked the unplugged hard drive and fan and booted up quite normally.
Sweetness! Now the HR20 makes almost zero noise aside from the hard drive I have attached via eSATA and a slight bit of electrical noise coming from the power supply (at least that's my guess).
I am going to have to monitor the unit to make sure temperatures don't get to high now that I have unplugged the fan, but the orientation of the fan leads me to believe that it was only there for the hard drive which was the major temperature polluter. It doesn't seem like there is a very hot CPU in this box so I'm thinking that passive cooling will work.
You're probably wondering how I make the HR20 silent by doing all this. After all, I'm just trading out one hard drive for another. Shouldn't they both be noisy?
The answer is not all hard drives are created equally -- and not all hard drive enclosures or mounting methods are either. For starters, Seagate hard drives have a reputation for having decent idle noise but pretty loud seeks, partly because they don't support a feature called automatic acoustic management. Secondly, these particular Seagates seem to have louder idle noise than the ones I'm used to (but not much louder). Finally, they don't seem to be mounted particularly well in this case. To be fair, it's pretty hard to mount hard drives well in such a small space. But they seem to have done the worst possible job of it, mounting the drive up front. Probably they do that for thermal reasons, but the mounting still sucks.
Anyway, I used a western digital 500 se16. This is one of the quiet 3.5" HDs on the market. Much quieter than Seagates. Moreover, I enclosed it in a noise reducing enclosure made by Scythe (you can get it for under $30 at newegg). The enclosure eliminates almost all of the drive's seek noise and a lot of the idle noise. It doesn't get rid of the vibration though, so I simply placed the drive on a piece of bubble wrap.
Note that this enclosure is designed to be used inside a PC, so I had to bring my own power, which I did from an OKGEAR eSATA enclosure.
Now if you follow this method, you can both increase capacity and lower noise all in one step. But if you just want to lower noise, you can probably get adventurous and remove the seagate from inside the HR20 and put it in a Scythe enclosure. You'll still hear some seeks, but it will be much much quieter. All for about $30. (I'd proabbly recommend leaving the case cracked open and getting power for the drive from the HR20 itself using a molex extension cable.
If you do decide to get a drive, I highly recommend the Samsung 501LJ. It's 500 gigs and only $150 at newegg and it is the quietest 3.5" hard drive I have ever heard or seen. I'm actually in the process of setting up 6 of them in a RAID for my HTPC. I never thought I'd find a hard drive quiet enough to put in the same room as my TV, but I think the Sammy qualifies. I'm pretty confident that if you get a Sammy with a $30 eSATA enclosure (comes with its onw power supply) you wouldn't even need the Scythe enclosure. Just put it ona piece of bubble wrap near the case and presto -- it's all quiet.
Also, I should point out that I actually OWN my HR20. Somehow I got lucky and 2 of the 3 HR20s I have I own, despite having paid a total of $200. You are definitely violating your lease and voiding the warranty by doing this. You should not do this if you have never worked inside a PC before. But as long as you know what a sata cable is and what a molex to sata power converter is, you should be more than fine.
You've been warned. But the rewards are worth it. Silence from your DVR while watching a good movie on HBO-HD --- well, that's priceless.
