Originally posted by Maveric169
Well heat on HDD's can corrupt data, and will shorten the life span of the drives. There was a formula that I saw once that predicted the life expectancy of computer hardware based on heat and time exposed. It was something like for every 2 degrees C over "optimal" (what ever that happens to be for that hardware) if run at that temp for 1 year constantly, you reduce the life of the hardware by like 3 months. It was something like that.
The bottom line is that you want to keep EVERYTHING in you PC as cool as possible. If these 3 HDD are internal (meaning behine the front of the case with on air ventilation or in a exposed drive bay, as most are) the heat can become very hot depending on drive access and usage. I would recomend a HDD cooler for each HDD. There are some really neat ones out now that are complete self contained units that can cool multiple HDD's.