Are hard disk drive coolers worth it?

[earthdick]

I am trying to gather as much information as possible on how to cool down my new case. Are hard drive coolers necessary? Does anyone have any experience with them, good or bad? Thanks.

[Kingslayer]

No they arent worth a damn in their stock form. However with some simple mods they get better.

There are basically two types.

Slim line ones using slim fans that bolt to the underneath of the hard drive. These are absolutely worthless. They cant even be modded to be a good paper weight. I will explain later.

Then you have the bay type. There are two of these. The normal ones there your hard drive mounts in them and the face plate has anywhere from 1 to 3 fans on it. And the newer highend ones are totally covered and act as a heatsink for your whole hard drive. These have their flaws also.

The big thing here is to get the hot air coming from the HDD out of your case. 90% of the hard drive coolers out there dont do this.

The slim line ones just blow air from inside your case onto your hard drive and back into your case. Yep, pretty worthless.

The bay types are bad too, 90% of these pull cool air from outside the case, push it across the hard drive, and into your computer. Right towards your CPU. Not good. Why stick a blow dryer on your CPU, your trying to keep that cool too right? But if you get a bay type, unscrew the fans, and flip them around and blow the air out you correct this problem. The air that your pulling should only be a few degrees above ambient at this point anyways. Yes your HDD wont be as cool as the stock method, but your also keeping your case temps down at the same time.

[earthdick]

Thanks Kingslayer, you really covered all the drive coolers. I think I will take your advice and flip the fans over in a bay type cooler.