Quieting a Toshiba SD-H400

[dt100]

I read through many posts, and could not find an answer. I just inherited a Toshiba SD-H400. The fan (hard drive?) noise is considerably louder than my old Sony series 1 (with an upgraded Seagate Barracuda IV). The unit also has a little more vibration than my Sony. I read some old posts about owners also not happy with the noise of this unit. My question for those who have modified this unit, did any modifications quiet this unit down? Or, is the design just a “loud design.” Some things I thought of are: changing the hard drive, changing the fan, using anti-vibration fan mounts or an anti-vibration fan gasket. Or, I believe that the sd-h400 fan size is 60mm. If there is room in the case, will using a 60mm to 80mm fan adapter, and using an 80mm fan make a noticeable difference? Before I started messing with this, I want to see if someone has already tried any of these. Thanks.

[dt100]

In case anyone is interested in this model, I will post what I have learned and will try to fix. As I have read with most units using a 60mm fan, most of the noise appears to be the air moving through the vents. To make matters worse, the fan is mounted in a metal holder that is held onto the case with two screws. The fan is a panflo fbl model which has slits on the sides to pull air in. The problem is that the metal holder blocks the sides. If I drill holes on the back of the case, I could mount the fan without the metal case. The metal case probably also adds to the vibration problem. Before I do all of that, I will try a panaflo fla model (no side slits), and the silicon style fan mounts, and see what difference that makes. I may also add a fan controller.
The other problem is the hard drive. One of the four legs of the support bracket is screwed directly to the bottom of the case. I am trying to avoid using the blue EAR grommets because I don't want to have to mess with drilling some of the holes in the support bracket for the grommets. I'll see if the silicon fan mounts can somehow be used for the four hard drive supports. The holes are all verticle, so it may work. For now, I have the unit sitting on several different layers of things, which seems to have taken care of most of the vibration problem, but I would like to reduce some of the hard drive vibration from inside of the unit.
I'll in about a week or so when the stuff I ordered arrives.

Edit: The air exiting the case could be louder than it needs to be because the fan grill built into the case are fairly large bars. If they used a wire grill, like on many computers, the sound probably would have been less.
The way I have temporarily gotten rid of the transmission of vibration from the case to the shelf is to put three layers of stuff under each leg. First I have an Isonode (left over from another project), then a 2"x2" cork/rubber vibration isolation pad from soundproofing.org, and then part of a neoprene mousepad. I will see how good the acoustifeet are at replacing this pile.

[dt100]

Here is what have done so far. The panasonic FBL style fan was about the same noise as the FBA fan. With the fan in the metal case, the FBA fan was very slightly quieter. If the fans were not in a metal case, the FBL might be quieter, but it was very hard to tell.
I could not use the fan mounts because the screw holes in the case are too small. They are not the normal size for a fan mount. So, I used a fan gasket. I did not want to drill holes to use the fan screws, at least not yet.
For the hard drive, I used the rubber washers from the gasket kit in between the case and the hard drive mount. I did not have a washer to put under the screw heads, so I made some from the thin, dense foam I have. There are four screws which attach the bottom of the drive to hard drive mount. I should put some washers there, but did not have any. All in all, I cut the vibration by about 30% or so. The acoustifeet work fairly well, about the same as the isonods.
Now, the huge improvement was the fan controller (Zalman fan mate 2). Most of the noise was coming from the fan, and I am able to cut that noise by half, or more, with the controller. The temp has only gone up a few degrees. I ran the controller cable outside the unit, through one of the sides of the case. I did not want to drill a hole in the case for the wire. If someone is trying to quiet a tivo with a 60mm fan, I highly recommend a fan controller.

[JamieP]

For what it is worth, the tivo motherboard has a fan controller built in. On a hacked tivo you can tweak the parameters to slow down the fan:
bash-2.02# fancontrol -h
usage: fancontrol [-help] [-terminate] [-setspeed speed] [-fancheck]
[-P P] [-I I] [-D D] [-Imin Imin] [-Imax Imax]
[-target temperature] [-target2 temperature]
[-lowestfan speed] [-sleeptime seconds] [-verbose]
The default values are: P=2, I=2, D=0, Imin=-5, Imax=50, target temperature
based on TiVo Config values, lowest fan speed=7, sleep time=30 sec.
fancontrol -lowestfan 3 has been reported to work well and quiet the fan significantly on some models.