Foam systems for protecting disk drives from mechanical disturbances

Abstract

A disk drive enclosure system includes an enclosure, a cage configured to mount a plurality of disk drives, and foam between the cage and the enclosure. The foam is characterized by a compliance, and has a plurality of voids selectively formed therein. The voids can be selectively formed to thereby increase the compliance of the foam. The voids can be formed through the entire thickness of the foam, or through only a portion of the thickness. The voids can be configured to form cooling air passages for cooling air circulated in the disk drive enclosure system. The foam can be a foam system having foam components, and the voids can be formed only in selected ones of the foam components. The enclosure system can include a plurality of disk drives mounted to the cage, and the voids can be located near the disk drives.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.