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Smart Drive Classic SATA HDD Silencer
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Grow Up Japan Smart Drive Classic SATA HDD Silencer

The Smart Drive Classic SATA HDD Silencer offers an almost total elimination of running noise from a conventional spindle hard disk and also assists with cooling it safely.

SSD drives may be the future as far as speed an silence are concerned, but for sheer capacity, they can’t come close to a conventional spindle HDD. Silence your HDD once and for all with Grow Up Japan’s flagship SATA HDD enclosure with its unique internal drive heatsink.

Smart Drive Classic
Smart Drive Classic

The issue of noise from hard drives has remained a long-established barrier to the dream of owning a silent PC. The whir and whine from a drive’s constantly-spinning platters and clicking from its head-seek can soon become annoying to anyone who values a quiet life whilst they use their PC. And pity the user whose PC has more than one drive! As you would expect, we have offered several solutions to this problem over the years, but we have yet to come across a product as effective as the Smart Drive from an unusually-named Tokyo-based company called “Grow Up Japan”.

Smart Drive Classic Retail Box
Smart Drive Classic Retail Box

The Smart Drive offers the very highest level of silencing and heat dissipation for your valuable hard drive. It is presented as a tidy-looking acoustically-sealed enclosure for any 3.5 inch hard drive which can then be mounted in a standard 5.25” (DVD drive-sized) bay. However, what makes the product stand out is its attention to detail as far as design is concerned. The Smart Drive’s product designers have stopped at nothing in implementing design features to reduce noise and increase cooling in every way possible.

Other HDD silencing products tackle the issue of heat extraction in a variety of ways, including the use of heatpipes, vented openings and fan-assisted cooling. However, the Smart Drive uses none of these compromises and delivers both brilliant silence and excellent cooling. Even toasty-running 10,000 and 15,000 rpm hard drives such as WD’s Raptor series can be safely silenced! In fact, using the product with these incredibly loud drives gives a very dramatic benefit, so at last you can have both performance and quietness.

Kit includes screws and power/data pass-through cables
Kit includes screws and power/data pass-through cables

One other problem with some cheaper HDD enclosures is that they do nothing to dampen the low-frequency vibrational noise from the hard drive. This typically manifests itself as a hum or rumbling noise, and can be amplified by the PC chassis. However, the Smart Drive addresses this issue very effectively through its use of soft heat-conductive materials and sheer mass - the product weighs over 600 grams! And one other benefit of using a hard drive enclosure is that the product brings benefits in terms of sealing the drive from harmful effects of dust which can prevent dissipation of heat.

Example installation showing power/data cable connection method
Example installation showing power/data cable connection method

The Smart Drive has undergone several minor design refinements over its lifetime and has now reached the pinnacle of a brilliantly engineered and executed solution. Despite its high price, Smart Drive sales in Japan and the USA have now reached nearly 100,000 units and we are proud to bring this product to the UK for the benefit of customers who demand the best. And because it is built like a tank, we are sure you will enjoy the benefit of the product for many years to come as you transfer it from PC to PC when you upgrade. Definitely a Smart Choice!

Features

  1. Flagship high-performance hard drive silencer/cooler
  2. Almost total elimination of noise from spindle and head servo
  3. Compatible with all SATA 3.5” drives (even 15,000 rpm)
  4. Simple installation/removal mechanism for 5.25” bay mounting
  5. Future-proof: reusable for many years to come
SpecificationsSmart Drive Classic
MaterialAluminium and steel (1.6mm)
Weight675g
Dimensions176 x 145 x 38 (L x W x H)
ManufacturerGrow Up Japan Inc., Tokyo, Japan
Hard Disk Type3.5” SATA
Case BayStandard 5.25” Bay
SATA 6 Gbit/s compatibleYes (since July 2014)
Warranty24 months
EAN barcode4536604020640
SpecificationsSmart Drive Classic
MaterialAluminium and steel (1.6mm)
Weight675g
Dimensions176 x 145 x 38 (L x W x H)
ManufacturerGrow Up Japan Inc., Tokyo, Japan
Hard Disk Type3.5” SATA
Case BayStandard 5.25” Bay
SATA 6 Gbit/s compatibleYes (since July 2014)
Warranty24 months
EAN barcode4536604020640

Customer Reviews

Silences effectively, but large temperature increases

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This silencer does silence my WD Black effectively. It is only barely audible even when seeking, and then you need to be close to it.

But on the temperature front, I do not know how previous reviews of its predecessors were conducted but my experience has been different. Without any fan blowing on it, it will bring the temperature at idle to 49 C, and 52 C under (hard drive) load. In comparison, the same hard drive not in the silencer and cooled by a fan will be at 34 C idle and 39 C under load. With a fan blowing directly at the silencer (I suspended it in a 5.25 inch bay above the one I mounted this silencer on), it will idle at 43 C and 48 C under load. Still too much in my opinion. Temperature of GPU, CPU, motherboard, etc when these measurements were done are in mid to low 30s.

When combined with the price, I might recommend one of the much cheaper suspension silencers and a fan blowing on it as I had to do here.

Quiet PC replied on 27th August 2013

Thanks for your feedback. It sounds like the WD Black may not be making good thermal contact with the Smart Drive because normally we wouldn’t expect much/any temperature increase. Often, the HDD temperature actually decreases when enclosed in a Smart Drive because of the larger heat dissipation area. In your case, it may be worth re-installing the drive to ensure that it is making good internal contact and you may find that running temperatures will then decrease.

Although cheap suspension-type silencers may give a small reduction in the clicking noise from the HDD head servo through their chassis decoupling effect, they do nothing to decrease overall running noise. For this reason and if silent operation is the primary objective, complete enclosure of the drive is a better solution.

Otherwise, it’s good to know that you are very happy with the silencing properties of the Smart Drive. The maximum recommended operating temperature of the WD Black is 60°C so you are still well within the safe limit, but if you would prefer to send back the Smart Drive for a refund then of course this is no problem - please get in touch. As far as price is concerned, we are optimistic that our next batch of Silent Drives will be priced lower than our current stock because the value of the Japanese Yen has dropped recently.

About as Quiet as an imac

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Easy to install huge noise reduction but I can sill here it in a quiet room.

This one works!

,

The HDD silencer is a bit on the expensive side, but really worth the money.

A Western Digital “Black” drive is a nice HDD, but has clearly more noise than other WD desktop drives. Using this Smart Drive HDD Silencer made the WD Black running almost totally without a sound. And this is an “open” slot in the case (same as the drive would be outside the case).

I don’t know yet how the cooling will work, but hopefully the drive will not run much hotter than before. In my case a small downside might be that before the drive was in a 3,5” slot right behind a case fan, and now it is in a 5 1/4” slot with no case fan in front.

9/10 stars because of price only.

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