hard drive watercooling ?

I have seen a few HD WC systems. How much do HDs need water cooled. i have lots of copper stock, but would rather save it for blocks. will flatting out a piece of soft copper tubing and blazing it on a 3/32 flat sheet of copper, then attacing the coooler to the sides of the HDS, work enough?. i notice that my HDs get very warm but i am sure they are not throwing out much heat.


can it be that simple?

are you thinking of doing that way to save your copper blocks that could be used for waterblocks?

If i were going to do this i would drill straight through a copper block and put barbs on that and call it a day, it really wouldnt take much to keep the hd's cool, but i would think this would work a little better than what you mentioned.

yeah sounds good, i have a two foot square rod at 3/4", that would work great. I just wanted to be cheap with the soft tubing, but the rod cost me 24.83$, if i use 6 inches on both sides that is 12.50$. I could get one foot 5/8" soft tubing for less than a dollar.
but the squareness vs. the nasty flatend roundness(now oval) would be quite different, when viewed. I think will stop being a cheepass and not go out to eat and use the nicer looking square.

thanks for the help

a HD coler is a good idea, and may prolong the life of IBM and/or scsi drives, however it is NOT needed, except in a zero fan machine

I'd say you don't need one unless you are packing your HDD's in foam to quieten them down. And if you want to build one, here's a cheap way, get a chunk of 2mm copper or brass plate (about $4), about a 2 ft chunk of copper tube ($3), and some elbows and make one like I did, it's cheap, easy and works great!

http://groups.msn.com/Bernhard2/watercooling.msnw?Page=2

with out air flow newer hard drives get not warm but hot. i am making a custom case and the way i am designing it, there is no airflow were i plan on mount the HDs.

taigaa, thats the design i mentioned. i like it because its easy and cost effective. brass works good for you? i have a slab of 5/8" that i will proberly make small rectangle blocks and mount them on a thin peice of copper. esentialy your design except with blocks. but hack sawing 6" if 5/8" is time consuming, i will think about it a little more.

I have two 80GB Western Digital SE's, running as a raid array, and I plan on building on that to an array of four. If anyone's ever touched the bottom of them during a period of load, you can tell how hot these suckers get. Data integrity and prolonged hard drive life are important issues to me, and building a hard drive cooling block makes sense as an upgrade to a water cooled kit.

I have an Antec case, and just did some quick measurements. Running two hard drives per cage, where the PCB's of each hard drive facing each other, I can fit a block that has 1/8" thick walls and a 1/2" interior for fluid flows. I plan on custom building my blocks from copper stock, using 1/2" connectors and applying them with a thick thermal pad to the bottom of each drive.

Right now my fan cooled setup only serves to heat the air inside of the case and make more noise. It barely comes close to taking enough heat away.

.:: epoch of entropy

Yup, the brass works great. Conducts heat really well like copper, and is easy to solder to copper as well. I didn't really have a preference on brass over copper, that's just what they had in stock there. My HDD's used to get up to 54C with not much air flow when they were being used a lot (for downloading), and with the new block they stay at 40C even when wrappedn in foam. So Id say it's pretty effective cooling them from the sides instead of top or bottom.

cool input taigaa, that method works plenty well.

DVD drives are worse. i had my case open and i touched the underside of the drive and ive now got a square red mark on my hand to prove it

i just moved the drive up a wrung in the drive caseing (ive got 4 disk drive bays) and the problem dissapreard

nice, very nice. i deciced to go with the copper pipe and side plates. today i took a scrape piece of 5/8" tubing and hammered with wood as a medium. i got it nice and square. plenty of suface area.

Upload some pics when you're done Dr. S, I'd like to see what other people have done.

who cars about the dvd. oif it dies RMA it. even a heard drive can be rmaed so the integrity isn't to important, becuase they sould be backed up every day, and if raid is used, pire raid 0 should not. 0/1 rox tho

yeah i will some pics, i plan contructing in a day or two.

i notice CD burners get real hot also. I heard cases were some poeple can only burn a cd at a time and have to let the drive cool.