I keep my MSS on a wall shelf in the garage. Unfortunatley it's sorta near the door between the house and the garage, and the rest of the family has a habit of closing said door rather hard. Let's just say that windows rattle in other parts of the house. I don't know if it's a valid concern, but I worry about vibrations transmitted to the hard drives at the wrong time. Do I need to mellow out and not worry about it, or is there a cheap material I should put under the MSS to help dampen the potential vibrations?

BK

If it was a concern it would have happened already.
But if it makes you feel better then place a soft rubber or foam based mat under them.

I agree with Ruben. If you put a rubber mat or soft foam under the server, that'll help dampen the seismic ripples of the door slamming. Hard drives are designed to tolerate some vibration. When my kids are playing in the basement, there have been a few occasions where they bumped into the Dell XPS, a rather tall tower PC, and made it wobble considerably. All of the HDDs took it in stride. The chassis of most computers dissipates some of the vibration their own, so unless the slamming of the door is right next to the computer (within 1-3 feet), or the computer is taking a direct blow every time it happens, there's probably not too much to worry about.

_________________
Matt Sawyer
Owner, Dojo North Software, LLC

HP EX490, 4GB, E5300, 15TB - Server 2012 - Sharing and Streaming
HP EX487, 4GB, E5300, 13TB - Server 2012 Essentials - Backups