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Technic3d takes a closer look at this hard drive silencing device from Scythe. Scythe's first hard drive silencer we reviewed here and we were quite pleased by its dampening capabilities and overall design quality. However the addition of the heat lane to increase cooling upped the cost quite a bit making it a not so budget friendly solution. The new Quiet Drive which was first showcased at Cebit 2006 does away with the heat lane but promises to deliver comparable acoustical performance; using a decouple mounting system to prevent hard drive vibrations to be transferred to the case.

The Quiet Drive accommodates both SATA and PATA drives. The hard drive is installed on an aluminum plate which is then encapsulated by soft dampening material. The complete construction fits in a spare 5.25" drive bay. The review by Technic3d is lacking in a bit in performance tests area as only a few tidbits of temperature results are available. The reviewer does say the noise is reduced, but doesn't mention dBA values or provide sound samples for us to compare. The Quiet Drive is priced at €36, not too expensive, but if you want to silence multiple hard drives it can become costly.

Keep an eye on the Madshrimps main page as received a test unit recently and plan to do some stress testing in the coming weeks.

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