The Product for People Who Miss Noisy ‘90s HDDs

We all love to reminisce about the screeching sounds of dial-up modems, but there is another noisemaker from the era that many of us have forgotten: the humble hard disk drive (HDD). But while you may not have remembered that was a thing, the sounds will definitely hit that nostalgic part of your brain. The HDD Synth is an upcoming product designed to simulate HDD noises, so you get that dopamine rush regularly.

Drives today are almost silent. Solid state drives (SSDs) don’t have any moving parts, of course, and so don’t produce any sounds at all. But even today’s HDDs are whisper quiet, thanks to modern motor drivers and construction techniques. If you haven’t used an old HDD in a while, you might not even realize how much louder they were.

But if you do and you miss those old HDD noises, HDD Synth will bring them back for you.

HDD Synth is an ISA expansion card that monitors the status of your PC and HDD/SSD, then plays recorded .wav files accordingly. There are spin-up sounds, idle humming, disk access clicks, and spin-down noises. And because those are just .wav files, you could change them to whatever custom audio clips you want.

The board is built around a Raspberry Pi Pico, so it is hacker-friendly. There is an SD card reader module for reading .wav files, an audio amplifier, and an onboard speaker. If ISA isn’t an option for you, there is also a provision to have HDD Synth react to your HDD status LED instead.

If that all sounds charming to you, you’ll want to sign up for the mailing list to get a notification when HDD Synth is available for purchase. It is also open-source and you can find the current prototype files on GitHub, if you just can’t wait.

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