Tor Johnson over at New Sound Lab has a fantastic new sound library out called NSL008 HARD DRIVES. I have played around with the sounds and they are superb. This is certainly a must-have and most-certainly something I wish I had on a recent project! The facts ma’am:
This library features recordings of four hard disk drives (3.5 inch – 5400 & 7200 RPM). All essential hard drive sounds are included (boot up, read/write/copy/delete, power down) that will work great for general computer sounds and ambience.
Additionally, each hard drive was opened up, manipulated, and ultimately destroyed to create a collection of raw, abstract and unique sounds. Found materials such as metal, cardboard, plastic, and tools were used to control the hard drive’s motor, platter, and head actuator. These sounds work especially well for creating the sounds of mechanical robot movements, electric motors, and futuristic machinery.
Sounds were captured with a Sanken CSS-5 Shotgun mic in mono mode, and an Aquarian H2A Hydrophone, using a contact mic adapter into a Sound Devices 702 recording at 24bit, 192khz..
All sounds in this release are offered in 24bit 192khz Broadcast Wave format. Files are in a zip file, which includes a PDF with metadata.
You can find the library here for quite the bargain of $30.
Hey, those are some waaaay cool sounds! I might have an old Compaq server with some 10Krpm SCSI drives you can have for free if you plan to expand on the library in the future.