2 HDD right next to each other?

IceWilly · Dec 21, 2003

How much heat to Harddrives give off? And is it bad to have 2 harddrives and a floppy mounted in the 3 spaces in the Bay? Would this setup get to hot? There is one 7200 rpm WD, and one 5600 rpm maxtor.
thanks

slater3333uk · Dec 21, 2003

The amount of heat they attualy put out is differant for each drive but as a general rule 7200rpm dives run hotter than 5600rpm models.

Your setup sounds far from perfect but im not sure wether you will attualy experiance any problems. The maxtor is not relly a problem. i have one of those and is does not give out much heat at all. However the 7200rpm WD is more likely to overheat so try and keep this drive with some air space around it and maybe a fan blowing over it.

CrashOveride · Dec 21, 2003

Probably fine, esp if you have a fan in the front of the bay, but you can use somthing like MBM5 to monitor your temps if you need... I wouldn't let mine over 40 if I could help it.

TheWesson · Dec 21, 2003

Well I had an IBM DeskStar that started corrupting my Windows installation. It was in a "sandwich".

I blame that on my case temps which were 100F/ 40C at the time. (I wasn't aware that the front fan did nothing, since it was totally blocked by the front plastic of the case. There was no rear fan. Basically, the PS fan cooled the whole case.)

To answer the original question, a 5200 RPM HD is said to consume about 6 watts and a 7200 RPM HD 8 watts.

In summary, it's the right thing to do to offer your hard drives some cooling of some sort (at least a cool case) but most times you'll get away with not doing it.

the wesson

ps these days the deathstar is in my machine at work, serving as a spool/temp/repository drive, and doing fine.

IceWilly · Dec 21, 2003

how would you monitor hd temps with mbm5? u mean just case temps?

anyway the setup is in a Lian Li Pc60 water cooled. I really have no room for a fan around the HDD's and i guess i will have to leave them how they are. I am almost sure i won't have problems but i just wanted to hear what people thought.

CrashOveride · Dec 21, 2003

IceWilly said:
how would you monitor hd temps with mbm5? u mean just case temps?

You check the option and set up the sensors. I mean case, hard drive (SCSI or IDE, maybe SATA), and CPU.

clocker2 · Dec 21, 2003

You can also use HDD Monitor to do this. I like it better than MBM5 and it will display your temp in the systray.

Jimbob7 · Dec 21, 2003

i have had a 15,000rpm and a 7200rpm drives together for a year
and i havent had any trouble

In the summer they got rather hot though

CrashOveride · Dec 21, 2003

clocker2 said:
You can also use HDD Monitor to do this. I like it better than MBM5 and it will display your temp in the systray.

MBM5 can do that!

IceWilly · Dec 21, 2003

Okay so the harddrives should be okay and i will monitor them, but... what about a harddrive up against the radiator of my watercooling system. The bottom of the harddrive rests firmly on top of the radiator and i placed a mousepad between them to stop any flow of current. Would the bottom of the Hardrive heat up to much from this?

clocker2 · Dec 21, 2003

Obviously that is hardly an ideal arrangement.
You don't have a smidgen of wiggle room with the radiator?
I would worry more about vibration than electrical interference.

CrashOveride · Dec 21, 2003

I would cut the mousepad so that it only covers the harddrive where the rad is touching it if you can't move them apart more.

MRip · Dec 21, 2003

do you mean the large flat side that air is pulled through? That would really kill performance. If so, I might try to think of a better place...

{BC}Helix · Dec 21, 2003

after reading this thread i wanted to see what kind of temp decreases by "unsandwitching" my two 7200 RPM HD's would get me. the only HD that i got a temp reading from the HDD temp monitor was my IBM which was reading at 42C. As someone said above; you shouldn't let you're HDs get above 40C so i seaprated the two and got the IBM down to 37C. so far i have notice a slight incease in boot times, so separating them did make a difference, for me anyway.

CrashOveride · Dec 21, 2003

Well , It isn't so much you souldn't as I don't like it, Maxtor says the max operating temp for their HDDs is 55C

The ones that aren't plugged into SATA coverters and are right next to each other that I have are @ 20C right now

Thats 4C cooler than my mobo says my case is. One of them is my windows isntall and one is what I downlaod stuff to and listen to music off of so it's almost constant use for both of them.

hafa · Dec 22, 2003

My experience over several years and hundreds of hard drives in systems I've built shows that there is a clear correlation between hard drive temperature and longevity. A cooler drive will last longer. Anything you can do to bring the drive temp down will not only prolong the life of the drive, but will (as you've seen) give you a small performance increase as well. Of course there is a point of diminishing returns, but the closer you can get the drive to ambient the better. My general rule of thumb is a minimum of 1/4" between drives and at least one 80mm (preferably a 120) fan per every 2 drives.

IceWilly · Dec 22, 2003

Well who knows. I have no space to seperate them, so they are going to have to stay like that. Case temps are around 80 F but never higher.

In response to another post, No the side of the Rad is facing the HDD so it doesn't effect airflow or anything.

On a better note, I finished my system with no other real hitches and so far my temps are down about 10 degrees (cpu) that with my thermal right sk-6 (fan at low). Its 93 F now and thats good enough for me. thanks again.

jlin453 · Dec 22, 2003

My personal experience: when my system was watercooled, my case temp was not very good. I had two maxtors in a raid0 setup. They were located below my cd drives and above my floppy (very little air flow). They died very quickly. I learned my lesson and now my watercooled system is dissassembled and I'm back to air. My two harddrives are sitting behind my 120mm intake fan happy and cool

It'll be a tough decision when I change to watercooling: where to put the harddrives. No matter what, keeping your hard drives cool is a very important thing to consider

IceWilly · Dec 22, 2003

ok ok, i give up. I just bought a HD mouting kit for the 5.25 bay.

This way the damn radiator won't rub it, and they will both be next to cooler devices (cd burner and floppy, both rarely used).

Figured i had more room than i thought and i really don't feel like having my HDD's fail.

CrashOveride · Dec 22, 2003

You still wanna try and get some airflow, if you are using 2 5.25 drive bays you can stick an 80mm fan in there pretty easily, it can be silent and still cool just fine dandy and well too

2 HDD right next to each other?

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