hdd cooler

[juliendogg]

ok, i was thinking of making myself a simple hdd cooler for my twin maxtor drives. the i can take the exact measure for the space between them and sandwich the block between the two drives. My questions are.... is simply having the cooler contact the bottoms of the two drives sufficient? i havn't seen very many hdd coolers, only inovatech's and one other i can't recall. i can get a solid piece of aluminum or copper and cross drill to get the water pathways i want. what i really need to know is what part of the drive produces the most heat? right underneath the motor seems to be hottest?

any ideas or pics would be great.


thanx,
J.

[onx]

hmm i donno how well that will work, but i was wondering if anyone could put up some links to hdd coolers one could purchase.

[anvil82]

I think cooling the top is better.

It is where the platters are.

[juliendogg]

Originally posted by anvil82
I think cooling the top is better.

It is where the platters are.

hmm, but the cover on top of the hdd is steel yeah? and the lower part of the body is aluminum. seems you'd transfer more heat from the drive overall if you could cool the aluminum.

hmm i donno how well that will work, but i was wondering if anyone could put up some links to hdd coolers one could purchase.

http://heatsinkfactory.com/cgi-bin/HFAstore.pl?user_action=detail&catalogno=IN-005

you can buy one there ^^ for $60. it does work and pretty well, and i bet i can make one as good for less than a 20 note. :D

[anvil82]

Originally posted by juliendogg
hmm, but the cover on top of the hdd is steel yeah? and the lower part of the body is aluminum. seems you'd transfer more heat from the drive overall if you could cool the aluminum.


Wouldn't you get more surface area though from the top?

[wormwood]

I just went with 4 Koolance hard drive coolers and a dedicated Maxijet 900 pump and Swiftech rad. Each cooler cools two hard drives, although I had to make my own "2nd hard drive kits". God, these Dremels pay for themselfs, don't they? Comparatively cheap, and does the job.

Please don't try to cool from the top. It's just a thin plate of metal to keep dust bunnies out.

And here are some links picked up with this boards Search Function...

http://www.wizarddesigns.co.uk/hddcoolers.htm
http://koolance.com/products/product.html?code=HDC1-A01
http://heatsinkfactory.com/cgi-bin/HFAstore.pl?user_action=detail&catalogno=IN-005

Or, you can make your own...

http://groups.msn.com/Bernhard2/watercooling.msnw?Page=2
http://www.webx.dk/oz2cpu/pcmod/water.htm
http://www.digital-explosion.co.uk/index.php?articleID=31

[wormwood]

Missed the first post:

Cooling from the bottom is the absolute best, but the sides work fine and are easiest to get at the jumpers.

For anything less than 15K drives, it's a wash. The chips and spindle don't get much hotter than the sides. There is a big plate that the spindle is mounted to, it is the same piece as the sides, thus cool the sides and all is well for most drives. The drives I have get REALLY hot on the chips and spindle. They are the IBM 15K drives, currently the hottest (temp wise) drives in Storage Reviews database. But hey, they were cheap and even with just 4 of them, I get 200MB/sec read and write across the stripe. I'll be adding more soon, thus water cooling is a need vs. desire.

[juliendogg]

Originally posted by wormwood
I just went with 4 Koolance hard drive coolers and a dedicated Maxijet 900 pump and Swiftech rad. Each cooler cools two hard drives, although I had to make my own "2nd hard drive kits". God, these Dremels pay for themselfs, don't they? Comparatively cheap, and does the job.

Please don't try to cool from the top. It's just a thin plate of metal to keep dust bunnies out.

And here are some links picked up with this boards Search Function...

http://www.wizarddesigns.co.uk/hddcoolers.htm
http://koolance.com/products/product.html?code=HDC1-A01
http://heatsinkfactory.com/cgi-bin/HFAstore.pl?user_action=detail&catalogno=IN-005

Or, you can make your own...

http://groups.msn.com/Bernhard2/watercooling.msnw?Page=2
http://www.webx.dk/oz2cpu/pcmod/water.htm
http://www.digital-explosion.co.uk/index.php?articleID=31



thanx for the info! i was planning to sandwich the block between the two maxtors, they're 7200rpm drives, but they put out enough heat to raise my case temps considerably, very warm to the touch. some cooling couldn't hurt eh? :D

[wormwood]

In August, I lost two hard drives to heat (both 7200). My swamp cooler stopped cooling the house, and by the time I got home, the drives were toast. Lost other stuff too, but hard drives are by far the worst because they have DATA. You can spend a few bucks and replace a CPU. Re-typing in stuff, well, that's priceless.

Hard drives CAN AND DO die if they get too hot. IMHO if there is a single component that deserves cooling attention, it's the hard drives. It might be inconvienient to replace other components, but replacing a toasted hard disk is beyond comparison.

Hard drives die for lots of reasons, but their lives are prolonged by keeping them at lower temps. They are mechanical devices, and as such, when they are heated and cooled they expand and contract respectively. The tollarances on tracks is microscopic. Additionally, the berrings on the spindel motor can develop carbon deposits and make them loader if they are heated too far.

Cooling drives is a good thing. Water cooling them is ideal, because then they won't get much above room ambient.

[bigben2k]

I'm in the middle of building a dual HDD cooler.

I opted for the side cooling approach, and to leave a gap in between, so that I could thermal epoxy small heatsinks on the parts that actually get warm. They'll be cooled by a small fan.

details (http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6149&highlight=hdd)

[wormwood]

When I first set out to cool my drives, I first opted for cross drilling 1"x1"x5.75" coper blocks. I purchased 7'x1"x1" copper (god, that came in a LONG HEAVY TUBE!!!), but my little drill press (even with HSS TiN bits) was no match. I was unable to ever get it done, so I said to heck with it, and bought some Koolance blocks. They aren't ideal or high-tech, but they do the job and are brain-dead simple to install and there was no machining required.

I did end up drilling a number of aluminum plates, though. Most are the cooling plates so I wouldn't have to buy "2nd hard drive kits", but the two big ones are so I can fit more drives in the case. So, I did get at least some use out of my drill press, and a LOT of use out of my dremmel. :)