View Full Version : Who cools their Hard Drive?
Disputant
08-10-03, 01:02 AM
I have horrible luck with breaking hard drives for some reason. It is not system specific because this has happened on several AMDs and I think my current drive may be going down that road.
Not sure why this is happening, but I have toasted 2 IBMs (no surprise) and my WD SE is starting to make subtle noises and I noticed that it was quite hot. Perhaps my CD rom is warming it up, it is a crampt case.
Who all has add on cooling units/fans on their hard drives? And do they work well? I ordered a 2 fan bottom mount unit and a new larger aluminum case last week, hoping to keep this drive and my other components from joining my IBMs.
A side note, I do keep the drives defragged and I am running SP Pro on it at the moment. My board and CPU temps are fine as well, just the HD.
***On second thought, I probably should have posted this under cooling, sorry.
I cool my HDDs since they do get a bit warm in RAID0. My case, PC70, has 2 X 80mm fans blowing on the HDD cage. Anything that gets hot deserves to be cooled though this might only be part of the solution to your problem. Look into other areas that might cause storage device failures like your PSU.
firebird79
08-10-03, 02:45 AM
i cool my hard drive too! coz my hd are 10k scsi!! hot and loud :)
billstuck
08-10-03, 02:47 AM
I have two WD 800JB drives with a 120mm front case fan blowing on them. I've noticed when I have very high disk activity like multiplexing audio and video streams the fan keeps temps about 5 or 6C lower then without them.
What temps do you have on your drives? MBM should be able to read the WD since I know it reads mine.
I'm sitting at 30C right now 1C over my mobo temp at idle
slater3333uk
08-10-03, 10:00 AM
I made a couple of mini sinks and put them on the chips of my 2 maxtors which i have in raid0
I also have a single 80mm fan blowing across the two. I think the drives that i have run fairly cool anyway so ive not had any problems with hdd heat and system unsatbility :)
Quick69GTO
08-10-03, 10:03 AM
I have a Antec SOHO server case with an 80mm fan blowing on two 3 year old IBM drives. Those drives have never failed me.
I also have a modded Gateway 2000 server case with an 80mm fan blowing on four hard drives. They stay very cool.
If you can tolerate the added noise, always try to mount a fan to blow on your hard drives.
Good luck!
Disputant
08-10-03, 10:08 AM
You input is greatly appreciated, think I am going to start off with air cooling on the drive and definitely going to put a sensor on the drive to monitor temps from now on.
Don't know why I have neglected cooling there until now. Maybe I secretly wanted my drives to die so I would have an excuse to buy newer faster ones. :)
Cjwinnit
08-10-03, 10:09 AM
My IBM is in my case on the floor of it, and the WD is on the top of the case with an 80mm fan blowing on it, case cover off.
Ralf Hutter
08-10-03, 10:59 AM
I started cooling my drives back when everyone started having trouble with the 75GXPs. I alwat use a temp monitoring program like Dtemp (http://private.peterlink.ru/tochinov/) or MBM to monitor the temps of my drives at all times.
I've found that it doesn't even take much airflow to cool the drives down quite a bit. I run Antec SX10x0 and SLK3700 cases that have the provision to have a case fan right in front of the drive so that's what I do. I've found that a 5V or 7V panaflo L1A is plenty sufficient to keep my drives running about 6-8°C cooler than with no active cooling at all. I will not run a drive in my computers that's not actively cooled. My data is too important to risk.
aftermath
08-10-03, 12:12 PM
i have 6 drives.
I cool the four in my raid with 4 80mm fans the drives are all in 5 1/4 bays.
The raid disks do not allow me to moniter the temperatures with a utillity that can read smart data but one of my other disks that is not cooled activly (its cool by the positive case presure escaping past the grill in frunt of it) reads at 31*c i dont know how acurat that is tho.
using one 80mm fan, blowing straight onto my discs
i have 2* wd360gd´s in raid0 and i have watercooled them :D
http://mitglied.lycos.de/cm50k/heattrap/ht03.jpg
Originally posted by Perre
very nice hehe
very nice indeed
billstuck
08-10-03, 06:30 PM
Looks very nice, but i bet they'd be cooler with air cooling and some space between them. The top and bottom especially get hot not the sides. Your cooling very little surface area and unimportant surface area at that.
I've always recomended cooling anything 60gigs and above. I h ave a $7 dual fan heat sync on mine. Works VERY well.
Cool it or lose it.
Rob
Disputant
08-10-03, 07:21 PM
I really like the looks of that water cooler setup. Nice job!
As I look at my checkbook...
Originally posted by CM50K
[B]i have 2* wd360gd´s in raid0 and i have watercooled them :D
Are those custom? Nice, I like that setup.
I air cool all my hard drives. I thought I had killed one once after reformatting it a couple times in a row, it was burning hot . After that I always actively cooled my drives at least in my main machines. Now I just need to deal with the vibration of my pump causing a performace drop...
-Rav
Giblet Plus!
08-10-03, 10:56 PM
My 15k SCSI drive used to get pretty hot. It, and my 5.4k Maxtor sit on converters in the two top bays of my dragon style case. I added a 120mm blowhole on the top (running @5V), and now the SCSI drive is somewhere between cool and warm to the touch. :)
Watercooling your drives (especially sub 10k ones) is overkill. All it does is kill the flowrate for the rest of your system.
Stedeman
08-10-03, 11:03 PM
You don't need to add a sensor as all the newer HDD have on built in so any SMART program should be able to read it.
P.S. I also cool all mine down with an Antec heat sink and dual fans setup. I did have to pop the fans off to wrap the wires around them because they where so long (now they are just long enough to fit into the HDD and act as a pass through)
Originally posted by Stedeman
You don't need to add a sensor as all the newer HDD have on built in so any SMART program should be able to read it.
<snip>
My HD (western digital) does not have temp reporting in SMART. Also, my RAID array confuzzles the utility I got, so no SMART there. (The Western Digital drive is off of the array, by the way). Any tips for people like me who can't just use SMART to get temp reporting?
gt24 - Welcome to the forums!!!
Most newer WD's don't come with SMART temp probe. I can't see the temps on my Maxtor in Raid0 or my single WD80se. Open the case and touch it. If you can't keep a finger on it, it's too damn hot. I have 2 fans blowing over my hd's and they keep very cool, almost room temp. Before I had the fans, the drives were very warm, borderline hot.
-Bobby
Awwww, thanks! :D I was lurking for a long time, just reading things here and there, and I got addicted to the place... :)
Anyways, I removed a drive from my system that was in the exact same place, which is above my CD-Rom drive. This was after pulling both panels out of my system and unscrewing the drive from the bay. The drive was somewhat hot to the touch, and that got me worried. This Western Digital drive is new, but I worry about how it will do in this bay. I have two other drives RAIDed, and a fan (80 mm) blowing over them taking in air for my case. Would a drive do ok above my CD Rom drive in a case that reads 39 - 43 C with no airflow near it?
OSUmaxx
08-11-03, 12:55 AM
One of my front 80mm fans cools my drive(s) on each of my systems. I've never had any of these drives fail so far.
Originally posted by gt24
Would a drive do ok above my CD Rom drive in a case that reads 39 - 43 C with no airflow near it?
I personally wouldn't leave it there. Drives are safe up to 55°C during operation. It could easily get over that with no airflow and I think that's one of the main reasons there are as many hd failures as there are.
-Bobby
Somebody had to ask this sooner or later... but what do you recommend for a 5.25" HD enclosure that would be good at cooling down the drive?
http://www.crazypc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=120199&Product_Code=5212
I just like the idea of the above system because it brings air into the case (and that area of the case is an air bottleneck right now). However, my drive stays in my machine, and I cannot remove it with that system. Low cost though...
http://www.crazypc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=120199&Product_Code=PC9415
I know what my drive is doing temp wise, I can control the fans, however it takes air from the inside of the case and uses that to cool the drive. Considering that my system temp is around 40 C, I dunno if that is a great idea. However, I can monitor what is going on, and I can keep a quiet system if things are cool.
Any suggestions? What do you think of the two I have pointed out?
You should check www.resellerratings.com before you buy online.
I was thinking something like this (http://www.hardcorecooling.us/product.asp?0=212&1=266&3=126) would be better. I've ordered from them before and they're pretty good.
-Bobby
ajrettke
08-11-03, 10:00 AM
I think all you need is just a little airflow over a HDD to cool it. I don't think it's really neccessary to cool HDD's unless there raptors, or 10-15k SCSI's. GT24, I wouldn't spend the cash on those things. The best way to cool a HDD IMO is to have an 80mm case fan in front of the drive and have a space...so a drive on top, space, drive on bottm. I know chieftec and antec comes with a mount in this place already (otehrs may too). That's more than enough cooling for any IDE HDD.
Ralf Hutter
08-11-03, 10:47 AM
I wanted to have a mobile rack and wanted to make sure the drive stayed cool but I didn't want to hear those noisy little 40mm fans that they put in them. I dremeled out the bottom of one of my mobile racks, left the cover off and put a Panaflo 80mm L1A beneath it. The L1A is running at about 8V and is completely silent. The HDD temp runs about 1-2°C over the ambient case temp. The airflow's not too great through it but it's plenty to keep the drive cool.
Bottom of rack:
http://home.mminternet.com/~mwtrummel/Images/HDD_rack_bottom.jpg
Top of rack:
http://home.mminternet.com/~mwtrummel/Images/HDD_rack_top.jpg
Fan mounting setup:
http://home.mminternet.com/~mwtrummel/Images/HDD_rack_fan.jpg
Disputant
08-12-03, 12:52 AM
Well, I got my parts today. Installed a Vantec bottom mount HD cooler with 2 fans and a heatsink. It only set me back $7.99 at newegg and is worth every penny. No real noticible sound increase, but hey my box sounds like a trailer park in tornado season anyway and HD temps are nice and cool now.
Also got my PC71 setup so there is no problem with having a cramped case anymore, thinking about installing a weather vane in there so see which way the wind blows. :) Thanks for the input folks.
Thanks for the resellerratings link, I have used them before. I trust CrazyPC, and they haven't ever burnt me yet.
Anyways, I have made a decision. I want a pull drive and I am not cooling a HD that is going to be a huge heat source, so I am going with this product.
Kingwin KF-102 IDE Mobile Rack
Crazy PC link (http://www.crazypc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=120199&Product_Code=94010)
This site has a lot more info than CrazyPC (http://www.trillora.com/kw-kf-102-ipf.html)
The tray has a 40 mm fan taking in air from the outside of the case. A 50 mm fan blows air into the bottom of the drive (most likely from inside the case. The product seems good, but I wonder if there is any fan filters in the front of the tray... Also, it kinda sucks that the tray has the fans and not the rack... but I don't see any other way it could work, besides it is not like I am getting many trays even though I could (http://www.crazypc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=120199&Product_Code=94012).
Anyways, is that a good product or is there one better for what I want to do (which is have a pullable drive that takes in air from the outside)? Also, can anybody find anymore info on this device? Thanks for the info!
Cúchulainn
08-12-03, 08:23 AM
I've been using an old CoolerMaster Cool Drive on my Seagate Cheetah 15k.3 for about a year now. I got it with a system I bought 3 or 4 years ago and have used it on my fastest drives ever since. It pulls in a nice stream of air that ultimately flows directly into my PSU fan. Has an easily cleaned filter and reduces the noise of the drive slightly. Works just fine.
Ralf Hutter
08-12-03, 11:43 AM
Originally posted by gt24
Anyways, I have made a decision. I want a pull drive and I am not cooling a HD that is going to be a huge heat source, so I am going with this product.
Kingwin KF-102 IDE Mobile Rack
Crazy PC link (http://www.crazypc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=120199&Product_Code=94010)
This site has a lot more info than CrazyPC (http://www.trillora.com/kw-kf-102-ipf.html)
The tray has a 40 mm fan taking in air from the outside of the case. A 50 mm fan blows air into the bottom of the drive (most likely from inside the case. The product seems good, but I wonder if there is any fan filters in the front of the tray... Also, it kinda sucks that the tray has the fans and not the rack... but I don't see any other way it could work, besides it is not like I am getting many trays even though I could (http://www.crazypc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=120199&Product_Code=94012).
Anyways, is that a good product or is there one better for what I want to do (which is have a pullable drive that takes in air from the outside)? Also, can anybody find anymore info on this device? Thanks for the info!
Those are good racks, but for me those small fans (especially the 40mm right up front) are too noisy. There is no filter on the front fan so it will pull some dust in. Ise those racks on some other boxes and the fans and drives get covered with dust after a few months.
does anyone know if there are any 3 1/2 inch HDD coolers?
Mr.Guvernment
08-12-03, 02:10 PM
Originally posted by billstuck
I have two WD 800JB drives with a 120mm front case fan blowing on them. I've noticed when I have very high disk activity like multiplexing audio and video streams the fan keeps temps about 5 or 6C lower then without them.
What temps do you have on your drives? MBM should be able to read the WD since I know it reads mine.
I'm sitting at 30C right now 1C over my mobo temp at idle
how did u set MBM to read your HD temp? Hard drive do not have internal heat sensors that i know of?
that temp seem more like your "ambient" temp in side your case, not your HD temp.
Mr.Guvernment
08-12-03, 02:12 PM
Originally posted by billstuck
Looks very nice, but i bet they'd be cooler with air cooling and some space between them. The top and bottom especially get hot not the sides. Your cooling very little surface area and unimportant surface area at that.
exactly!
it looks pretty , but likely does very litt.e
Originally posted by Mr.Guvernment
how did u set MBM to read your HD temp? Hard drive do not have internal heat sensors that i know of?
<snip>
From earlier in this thread...
Originally posted by Stedeman
You don't need to add a sensor as all the newer HDD have on built in so any SMART program should be able to read it.
<snip>
Dtemp (http://private.peterlink.ru/tochinov/) (posted by Ralf Hutter) is the app you want. It will read the SMART info from your drives and determine if they have temp probes in them. If they do, it will display your temperatures for you in the system tray. My Western Digital drives don't have installed temp probes, but a Maxtor that I know of does (I need to post about that soon). Anyways, give DTemp a try, it will most likely work for you.
Southpaw
08-13-03, 10:43 AM
I have a pair of Seagate Barracudas...40GB IV and a 120GB V. The V runs pretty warm....I have an Antec case and put a Panaflo in the spot designated for cooling the hard drve rack....no failures yet
SP
billstuck
08-13-03, 10:56 AM
Originally posted by Mr.Guvernment
how did u set MBM to read your HD temp? Hard drive do not have internal heat sensors that i know of?
that temp seem more like your "ambient" temp in side your case, not your HD temp.
My case temps are different so I don't think it's that. I went into the mobo monitor general settings page and checked a box called scan for IDE and SCSI drives, and restarted mobo monitor.
After I restarted in the sensor drop downlist i had a new entry called SCSI temp. I have a PCI raid card, but I don't think that makes a difference except maybe that's why it showed up as SCSI
I never cooled my 7200 rpm Maxtor, and while it was fine, it seemed a little too hot for my tastes, so from then on I have made efforts to cool all of my HDDs. Right now I have 4x Fujitsu 15ks, 2 behind a 120mm intake and 2 behind a jury-rigged 80mm intake in some lower 5.25 bays. Its only temporary (awaiting WCing in progress), but it seems to work well enough, and these things throw off considerable heat. I wouldn't say that special coolers are necessary unless you have limited space and have to put it in only one 5.25 bay; otherwise, placing it somewhere behind an intake or in front of an exhaust (ie LiteOn FS020) should be fine. I just did this with my sister's rig, 2x WD200BB in a Chieftec, and it works fine.
i use the vantec aluminum hdd coolers, i can't here them over my other fan noises at all, and they do pretty well.
I have a comp (not mine) that does have temp monitoring on the drives. The temp goes anywhere from 39 - 45 C. Should I be worried about that? There is no airflow near these drives, by the way, but the CPU is more than pathetic, so the ambient temperature in the case must be very low...
Thats OK for now, but watch it. Id be mildly concerned about anything over 40 C, and would start getting worried over 45 C, for any component. I know CPUs have run at 50-55C in OEM rigs, but HDDs IMHO require more concern.
The person who owns that computer came in and said the HDD temperature thingy went up to 49 C...
So, yeah... I dunno how I am going to cool that thing. All the drives are touching in her case and there is no room to space them out. Below the little drive cage thing is some holes, so a fan could go there except that the drive is touching the bottom of the drive cage, so I dunno where the air would go. Also, the case has one fan in the front blowing air below the drives (where the CPU is, by the way) and she also has the PSU fan. She said it would be ok to drill a hole into her sidepanel for an 80 mm case fan. How would I cool this setup?
What's the overall layout of the case, cooling wise? You can:
1. Mod the case for better airflow to improve the cooling of everything, if its worth it
or
2. Buy a cheap HDD cooler that attaches to the HDD itself, either with just a fan or a heatsink as the body of the cooler.
The big thing is to figure out if its worth it or not to improve the overall cooling situation of the case. If its not, don't mod just for the sake of the HDD, buy the cooler.
The hard drives are touching each other, the bottom of the drive tray, and the floppy drive as well. There is no room to put anything on the drives. I might be able to put fans blowing against the front of the drives, the back, or the bottom of the whole bunch of it. I dunno what I can really do with this configuration...
So, suggestions? I might be able to take a picture of the area in question, if it will help...
ConquereR
08-14-03, 04:16 AM
my hardrive is at 25 celsius. I use the "Ultimate Hard Drive Cooler"
gt24, is there a free 5.25 bay? If so, you could move one drive there, so you'll have enough space for both drives.
Ok, this person today took her case off so I could take a shot of the inside but I didn't get around to it so the case has been off. This person reports new temperatures of 29 - 40 C on that drive. I am thinking that it could be more of a case airflow issue than I thought...
There is one 5.25 bay free but as you can see in this picture, everything is rather tight.
http://goldentiger24.zeroth.cc/silly/HDDs.jpg
I might be able to move that drive, if it comes to it, however since removing the case had such a drastic effect on temperatures for those drives, there might be a larger issue here... would trying to improve the coolness of the case help everything out? If so, would drilling holes into the side panel help much?
Disputant
08-14-03, 08:34 PM
Could we get a discription of how many case fans there are, size and direction. For example:
My Case
Front:
2x 80mm fans blowing into the case
Side:
none
Back:
2x 80mm fans blowing out
1x 80mm fan on the power supply blowing out
Internal:
1x 70mm Heat sink fan
1x 80mm fan on power supply blowing out
2x 40mm fans blowing on the bottom of the hard drive
etc, etc...
Sometimes it is a matter of a fan blowing the wrong way, or the fans do not support enough air movement. That case is about as crowded as my old case, but the temps were fine with the way the air was moving.
Front:
1 Fan, 80 mm. Note, the front panel of the case has tiny holes and I can't feel any air comming in from the front, so I dunno if this fan is doing much. It is working, but, it might not have a way of drawing in air.
1 Fan, PSU, back
That is it.
System is an AMD K6-3 400 Mhz, these processors are known to create a heck of a lot of heat.
Disputant
08-15-03, 12:37 AM
That is a pretty small looking case judging by the way the hard drives overlap the motherboard. If it were mine, I think I would fork over 40 bucks on a new case. It doesn't even look as though there is room to slide the drives towards the back to put a fan in front.
But, without spending any money, maybe you could some how mount that bottom drive to the bottom of the hard drive cage just above that front fan. Then you could get a cooling fan in between them. That top hard drive has to be getting pretty warm like that if it is anything like mine was.
In my really old case that I never opened I did the gheto solution and didn't mount the bottom drive at all. It just sort of dangled in front of the fan. No windows on the box, so it didn't bother me and it never burnt up like that.
I had an old AMD before the XPs came out, 1200 I think, it was great in the winter for heating under my desk.
i have good airflow around my hard-drive, so i dont use
anything special like heatsink wise
I have 1 80mm fan mounted in front of my hard drive.:)
SunRedRX7
08-15-03, 04:38 PM
Ever since my parents had their hard drive die in their PC I've always tried to get at least some air blowing on any HD I install in any PC. For their PC and my gf's mom PC the simple HD coolers that are just a pair of fans that mount on the drives was more then adequate for bringing the drive from HOT to barely above case temps.
Thats one of the things I really like about my Lian Li case is how they position the drive cage directly in front of the twin 80mm fan intakes(smartfan IIs in my case).
gt24: Move each CD drive up one bay, then move one HDD up into the then-vacant 5.25 bay. Should be good enough if things work OK as it is.
one time i noticed my hd's were so hot, if u left your finger on them you could burn yourself and i became worried so i mounted my 80gb and 120gb in the 5.25 bay and put a 80mm fan in the front of the case blowing directly infront of the hd's.
My fan was mounted by cardboard, and duct tape :D
So now that the fan is constantly blowing on them, they barely heatup and it makes me so much more relieved :)
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