HDD Heat

[downunderground]

I have 3 hdd's mounted underneath my floppy disk drive. They are stacked on top of each other. Is this setup alright? I am concerned about the heat that these three drives will make so close together. Will this cause any problems? I don't know where else to mount them.

Cheers.

 

[Taurus]

tell us what kind of harddrives they are. certain models/brands are notorious for heating up.

you could also just feel them after your comps been running for maybe an hour. if they feel pretty warm or slightly hot, you might wanna try mounting one or two in the 5¼" bays.

 

[jonifen]

take a look near the fascia of your computer case. you may be able to mount an 80mm fan there... on some cases (mine included) the gap available is just the right size to squeeze an 80mm fan in front of the hdds. it doesnt do a lot, but it gets the heat into the main part of the case, which other fans/exhausts can then clear out of the case.

 

[Zedric]

If they are 7200 RPM drives they definately need a fan or a different setup.

 

[mbunny]

Is there any problem with them running hot?

My hard drives have been running HOT as in scalding hot for 2 years now.... I haven't noticed any problems...... but will they occur?

 

[Nick M]

Cool them. HDD + lots of hot = Bad.

They are more likely to fail. I suggest a different setup.

 

[canadian_divx]

how does heat effect the HDD?????

 

[Maveric169]

Originally posted by canadian_divx
how does heat effect the HDD?????

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 behind the front of the case with no real 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.

 

[Nick M]

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.

Good advice.

BTW, the self contained cooler units look really cool, but what if it breaks?

 

[Zedric]

HDD:s are rated for the temps they can handle during use. My Seagate is rated 0C to 60C and my WD is rated 5C to 55C. Pretty low if you think about it... Going over the upper limit is a really bad idea. It may work but there's no guarantee.

 

[shaunj66]

I have a Coolermaster DCD-4002 hard drive cooler on my precious maxtor 80gb (7200rpm) hdd, and it runs just fine. Nice and cool and it's not too noisy. It was quite cheap too.

 

[Maveric169]

Originally posted by Nick M
Good advice.

BTW, the self contained cooler units look really cool, but what if it breaks?

Well that is a risk that you take, I guess you wuld want to get a fan monitor setup for that. But there was one that I saw a few weeks ago while I was looking for something else that could hold 3 HDD's and had a 3 fan 5.25 drive bay intake, with ducts that blow on all 3 drives. The review on it was pretty good except for the noise, apparently those 3 fans were screamers. But it was a neat setup and an easy was to cool up to 3 HDD's with 1 unit.

 

[Master-J]

I have had 2 hard drives fail on me due to heat and i have only one recommendation:

NEVER stack 2 or more drives directly on top of each other as the heat that gets generated multiplies and it gets trapped between the drives and cannot escape since the heat rises from the lower drive and cooks the upper one. I'd leave one bay between each drive and move up into the 5 1/4" bays if necessary.

If you have three drives stacked, running in a warm room for a long periods of time, u'd be lucky for them to last much longer than 2 years. I generally find that drives will become scolding hot if they are stacked. With space between them, they should only be luke warm, and in an optimal situation, with a fan behind them, they should be almost cold to touch.

Another good idea is to have auto spin-down enabled, so after say 20 mins your drives switch off and unecessary heat is not generated (this really does make a difference).

 

[Maveric169]

The auto spin down sounds like a good idea period, how do you enable that feature?

 

[jonifen]

I had an IBM 30Gb drive which died due to high temperature... the guy in the shop said he'd swap it for me at no charge on the condition i put an 80mm fan in front of the harddrives in the PC (he had the same case as me at the time and knew an 80mm fan would fit perfectly - which it did ). Luckily I had a spare 80mm fan at home, so I stuck it in front of the new Quantum (they had no IBMs left ) and its doing the business - recently added a 30Gb Maxtor aswell and both harddrives are running über cool )

 

[jonifen]

Originally posted by mbunny
Is there any problem with them running hot?

My hard drives have been running HOT as in scalding hot for 2 years now.... I haven't noticed any problems...... but will they occur?

some harddrives are able to take the heat more than others... although they're perfectly happy with scalding hot temperatures, its still worth it to cool them imo