External (exposed) HD dock cooling

[10XTriplet]

I'd figure I would post this here. Not extreme cooling by any imagination, but is necessary if you keep it in these things for a few hours at a time as the drive does get hot to the touch.

Its real simple, probably why it works so well. I used large paper clips and bent them so they fit over the hard drive. I then put shrink tubing around the exposed paper clip with some excess to prevent shorting if it ever should happen. I then took 5v power from a unused floppy connector a fished it to the outside of the case and connected the fan... I'm using 5volts because I don't need to blow the drive over, just cool it, and being this close get the job done. The fan is powered only when the computer is on. What do you think?

 

[doyll]

Sure can't hurt anything.. and I think it will help.

Would be better if it was blowing from the side so air was passing both faces of HDD.

HDD's are designed to run at 40-50c safely. But I would rather keep them in he 30-40c range myself.

 

[10XTriplet]

Probably not.. any moving air around the drive works great. 12v fan run on 5 volts.. Nice an quite.

 

[doyll]

Well I agree 12v fans usually run on 5v just fine.. and quiet too.

 

[hafa]

Here's an interesting study in regards to drive failure rates in relation to temperatures. Fairly counter-intuitive, but you can't argue the methodology or data.

 

[doyll]

I've seen that hafa. Definitely hard to get my head around it. I could easily go for 25c - 50c have same failure rate.. but below 25-30c being so much higher rate and lowest between 37-47c. Gradual climb from 37 to 43c, than dropping to 45c and climbing again. The extreme 3 year failure with 4 years close behind, but 5 year not. Low/medium/high use is interesting too. 3 and 6 month failures are higher for low and high use than medium use... but the rest are more use = more failure... except year 3 again.

Way too many variables to make it definitive.. but the trend is obvious.

 

[10XTriplet]

I've seen that hafa. Definitely hard to get my head around it. I could easily go for 25c - 50c have same failure rate.. but below 25-30c being so much higher rate and lowest between 37-47c. Gradual climb from 37 to 43c, than dropping to 45c and climbing again. The extreme 3 year failure with 4 years close behind, but 5 year not. Low/medium/high use is interesting too. 3 and 6 month failures are higher for low and high use than medium use... but the rest are more use = more failure... except year 3 again.

Way too many variables to make it definitive.. but the trend is obvious.

That was written in 2007... Tech has changed since... ALOT! Failure rate is much more common now..

 

[hafa]

That was written in 2007... Tech has changed since... ALOT! Failure rate is much more common now..

References? Links, please!

 

[doyll]

What hafa said.

Very interested in seeing new data.

 

[10XTriplet]

Personal experience. That's my data. I have drive's that are 200MB that are still running vs today's technology that fail within the 1 year of ownership. Goes with retail 3.5" External drives, retail 2.5" external drives, OEM drives you name it. The quality control has dropped down considerably. I have more failures now than 10 years ago. Brand new laptops that the drives die in a year, yet I have old 10 year old IDE laptops that are still running fine...

I found a nice article done by google in 2007, its old, but Google did it..

 

[hafa]

Personal experience. That's my data...

Well, if you want anecdotal evidence, we have that in spades, as our shop has sold around 75 desktop PCs per year since 2001, that's a total of ~825 hard drives that we've installed.

Of these, we've seen around a 5% failure rate on older 80-160GB PATA drives, 10% failure rate on Raptors, <2% failure rate on 7200RPM drives 250-1000GB, and a 30% failure rate on WD green drives. You read that right. Of the 35 greens we sold before we stopped selling them, 12 of the drives, or ~30%, failed. We're still contending with replacing them with blacks, which seem to be fine. All drives were mounted in cases with positive cooling for the drive.

This sampling and our loose record keeping, however, pales in comparison to Google's effort; anecdotal evidence is just that. Although changes in platter density and numbers as well as dog-and-pony tricks with firmware and electronics to deliver greater energy efficiency have come into play since 2007, the essential technologies behind rotational drives have not changed all that much.

Some good things that have come out of all of the older (out-of-warranty) drive failures, however, is a surfeit of refrigerator magnets and getting on a first name basis with our local aluminum recyclers.

 

[EarthDog]

Here's an interesting study in regards to drive failure rates in relation to temperatures. Fairly counter-intuitive, but you can't argue the methodology or data.

+1.

Another lol cute idea 10x, just not somterhing u would ever bother with...especially seeing this data a long time ago.

 

[doyll]

Here's an interesting study in regards to drive failure rates in relation to temperatures. Fairly counter-intuitive, but you can't argue the methodology or data.

Actually there are many things in the results that indicate there is no conclusive proof. It's a nice bit of data, but way too many variables with very erratic results; like year 3 having 15% AFR with years 4 and 5 having 5%. Maybe 3 month is like 3rd year group? Thousands of drives from different sources, years, etc.

It's interesting data and it seems to lend credit to the high heat is not a issue. But nothing conclusive... and being 6 years old makes it even less relevant to modern drives.

 

[EarthDog]

Here is more data from a French etailer to add to this...

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=717026&highlight=hardware+failure+rates

Cliff's:

- Samsung 1.23% (as against 1.5%)
- Western 1.63% (as against 2.0%)
- Seagate 1.89% (as against 1.8%)
- Hitachi 3.95% (as against 3.0%)

Samsung keeps the top spot it gained last period, once again improving its returns rate while Hitachi’s score has worsened. Western has improved its rate significantly, moving ahead of Seagate. Now that Hitachi Storage belongs to Western Digital, it's to be hoped that WD will resolve these issues.

Six drives have a rate of over 5%:

- 9.70% Seagate Barracuda XT 3 TB
- 8.94% Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 1.5 TB
- 7.53% Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
- 7.30% Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2 TB
- 5.78% Western Digital RE4-GP 2 TB
- 5.33% Western Digital Caviar Green 3 TB

If we look at the individual models we can see that Hitachi isn’t alone in having high rates. The Barracuda XTs do particularly badly. What about the 2 TB drives overall?

- 7.53% Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB SATA 6Gb/s
- 5.78% Western Digital RE4-GP 2 TB
- 4.53% Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 2 TB
- 3.18% Western Digital Caviar Black 2 TB
- 3.07% Western Digital AV-GP 2 TB
- 2.55% Seagate Barracuda LP 2 TB
- 2.31% Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB WD20EARX
- 2.15% Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB WD20EARS
- 1.80% Samsung SpinPoint F4 EcoGreen 2 TB

 

[doyll]

Interesting data. Thanks

 

[wagex]

only thing i was concerned about was the wire getting pinched in there, 5v rails generally have a pretty high amperage kinda scary.

 

[EarthDog]

Kind of shows that some are improving and some are not... a bit contrary to the unsubstantiated post earlier (" Failure rate is much more common now..").

 

[10XTriplet]

Kind of shows that some are improving and some are not... a bit contrary to the unsubstantiated post earlier (" Failure rate is much more common now..").

Have to remember its an individually.. Each person will have different results.. Mine are terrible.

 

[EarthDog]

Sorry about your bad luck, but that is what it is, YOUR bad luck. A larger cross section, while not the gospel of course, paints a pretty different picture. Your initial statement was laid out generically and as a matter of fact, which is why a couple of us took exception to it.

 

[doyll]

I think we are seeing more failures than 20 years ago. Not higher percentage of failures, just more failures. But 20 years ago we only had one hdd in one computer in the home. Now we have 2 or 3 or 4 computers and several hdd's in some of them.