How do I cool my HDD's??

I want to cool my two 10krpm SCSI drives by big heatsinks passively cooled, but do not know which part of the drive to cool.
1. The sides?
2. The side with all the chips?
3. The side which is all metal (opposite to the chips side)?

Which side is most effective to cool?

what most people have done is make plates with water channels throught then and then mount the drives as normal using the screws onto the plates, with thermal grease between them.
have a look in the watercooling section and search around there.

Most of the heat comes out of the side of the drives so it makes sense to put the hsinks on the side. the top is just a lid and is insulated by the rubber seal. on some drives it dose touch the spindle in the middle so some heat is tranfered to it but its probably the least effective bit to put hsinks on. most people cool this part of the drive because it is the easyest bit to attach hsinks onto not because thats where most of the heat is present.

also it is probably a good idea to put hsinks on the little chips on the bottom drive as these do get hot

Forgive me, but I thought the bottom(with the chips) was the place that generated all of the heat. From looking at the design of most HD coolers, they mount to the bottom of the drive or have fans that blow over the drive from the front.

I like the temp drop I got from my vantec HD coolers. I'll give you exact temps when I get a probe, but the difference is SO HUGE you can feel it with your hand.

I used to think it was the side without the chips, the big flat plate of metal that was where the heat was, but recently I looked at the koolance HDD water cooler, and it cools the sides with the chips. I know the sides which come in contact with the case (where you screw it in place) go hot too.

So I think I will redo my plans for my HDD waterblock to incorporate this info.

thanks a million.
s.

have you ever heard of a hd failure due to heat? millions of pc's are shipped every day without any type of hd cooling.

you're not overclocking your harddrives, they run as hot in your computer as they do in the million oem pc's sold every day. if it was really a problem you would think companies would put hd coolers on stuff to begin with.

its probably really pointless, unless you have a raid setup with 4 7200rpm drives.. the best deal there would be some kind of fan in the front of the case exhausting air out..

mine gets hot, but im pretty sure thats fine cause if it wasnt, wd would include some kind of hd cooler in the box to help that 3 year warranty along.

the only point of a hd cooler is to get the hot air its generating OUT of your case, i have 3 hds and they are the hottest area of the case... thats why i have a sanyo denki 92mm infront of them.. it exhausts the air they heat and gets it out of the case before it gets to the HSF..

I never heard anyone say "God da_n cold killed my computer!"

Cost of above mod: time spent pulling old P1 HS out of a dinosaur and time spent cutting it up.

I don't think anyone is going to disagree that keeping any electrical component as cool as possible is going to extend its life.

NBX2, do an general search on IBM Death, I mean Deskstar HD's in the 40 and 60 gig flavors. You'll see alot of thread related to their demise from heat.

The statement that manufacturers would put HS their products if they needed them is ludicrous. A manufacturer's goal is to sell products, so if they did everything possible to make them last as long as they could, they wouldn't sell very many products now would they?

As far as WD's warranty, go ahead and buy a new HD and send it in under warranty. I bet the HD they send you back is a refurb, and not a new one like you just bought. One of the reasons why I'll never buy a WD ever again. They may make decent HD's now, but I won't forgive them for their past history.

He also said he's running two SCSI 10k rpm drives. If you look up the definition of heat in the dictionary, it has a picture of SCSI drives in there

If I paid over $150 for a HD, you bet your bottom dollar that I'll do everything to make it last as long as possilble.

i guess im just lucky then.. never had a hd failure.

well, scratch that. i killed a 1995 era 1.2gb cause my cordless phone fell off the desk onto the drive (which was one of those weird "mount it above the psu!" acer case designs.

i dont agree with something though. goal #1 is selling products, but goal #2 is satisfying customers. if everyone buys once from your company because you sell ****, then you will go bankrupt asap. you dont get anywhere by screwing customers over.

I really think though, how everyone says overclocking most cpus moderately will take a year or two off their lives, which would realistically be something like 10+ years at a stock speed and voltage.. the opposite applies to those chips on your hard drive. they are built to withstand the heat the hd puts out, cooling them isnt gonna get you more than 1 or 2 years out of a 15 yr lifespan.

for the record, the chips in my 1984 model car's ECM get REALLY F'N HOT, if the car has been on for awhile, the ecm will almost burn your hand.

it has no cooling fan, and sits all day in the sun (black car black interior, think 150 degrees.

its suffered no ill effects from the heat.

If someone shows me some definite numbers though im sure it would change my mind. so much in the "modding" scene just seems to be redundant and pretty much just like a drop in the pond.

you have a good idea though (same as mine) provided that isnt blowing all the hd's heated air into the case farther..

nbx2 said:

i dont agree with something though. goal #1 is selling products, but goal #2 is satisfying customers. if everyone buys once from your company because you sell ****, then you will go bankrupt asap. you dont get anywhere by screwing customers over.

for the record, the chips in my 1984 model car's ECM get REALLY F'N HOT, if the car has been on for awhile, the ecm will almost burn your hand.

you have a good idea though (same as mine) provided that isnt blowing all the hd's heated air into the case farther..

Click to expand...

Western Digital is notorious for their 20 gig and smaller hard drives dying premature deaths. No one seems to care and people still buy their hard drives. AOL's #1 goal is to sell their crappy product and their customer service just plain sucks, yet their the largest ISP in the world.

I can think of plenty of automobile parts that die premature deaths, strictly due to heat.....................allternators, starters, distributor modules, MAF sensors, etc.

OEM modules dont die.

if you go to vato zone and get the lifetime warranty stuff, yeah, they do. tommy boy has the best quotes "i can sell you a guaranteed piece of ****.. but its still a piece of ****"

buy ac delco parts if you want to buy them once

i have owned an atlas 10K II for over 2 years now and have had no issues with it heating up whatsover. last night i added another 10,000rpm drive to the same drive cage. i know most of you are familiar with the antec, chieftec, chenming file server cases. i put one drive in the middle of the rack and the other on the bottom and the air that is emitted from the fan blows directly across both drives. prior to this setup and before i added the 2nd drive i actually had a low power, and very low cfm case fan ($2 cheapie) mounted on top of the atlas's flat side and it cooled without a problem. never has my atlas been warm to the touch. i will see how this setup works now in the case with the added drive.

The reason I want to know which part of the hard drive is best to cool, is because my drives make a high pitch whine noise, so I want to stick some cooling in the best place, and then sound insulate the rest of the drive.
But of course sound proofing material is usually a good thermal insulator, so I need to make sure the drive is being cooling in the best way.

what make scsi do you have?

buy a hermanator. you can find one at any local computer store or the review at www.awaremag.com/reviews/vantec.html and a temp comparison at www.awaremag.com/reviews/vantec_2.html