Avoid HD failures, KEEP IT COOL!

[Andromeda43]

Keep It Cool:

Several years ago, when the IBM Deskstar 40 gig hard drive was the hot ticket

item, I had four of them die in just one season, in my own PC.

When I reached in to remove the last one, it was so hot that it burned my hand.

I replaced that failed drive, but began a search that very day for a fix for drive

overheating. I tried a single fan HD cooler bolted to the bottom of the drive.

No joy. I even tried a "Hermanator", ($49.95) with drive cooler fans mounted in an aluminum

heat sink that surrounded the drive. Again, no joy, the drive still got hotter than

I'd like it and those little fans were very noisy.

Finally I settled on a two-fan cooler, mounted under the drive, with 1/4"

spacers to move the fans just far enough away from the bottom of the drive to prevent

what Air Flow Experts call an "Air Dam". It worked! My drive now stayed at room temperature.

Here's the two-fan assembly:

These coolers can be ordered, on-line, here:

http://store.cwc-group.com/hadrcowidufa1.html

And, here's what a cooler mounted to a Hard Drive, with 1/4" spacers, looks like:

Here's my own SATA Hard Drive, with cooler, spaced out in a 5.25" drive bay,

for maximum cooling.

Here's my backup HD, with cooler, mounted in a lower HD bay. Four little support

tabs in the frame had to be bent out to allow for the added height of the drive

plus cooler. (No big deal)

In the following picture, there was NO place to put a second HD, so I put the

second HD, with its cooler in the base of the PC. (up side Down. Secured with a

dab of RTV Silicone Sealant)

(A friend in Arkansas, used pink Duct Tape to secure his own second drive in his Dell PC)

Using a cooler to keep the hard drive from burning itself up is the important thing.

How and where you mount the drive, is of little importance.

Remember, a cool computer is a Happy computer!

Andromeda43 B)

[Zxian]

Using a cooler to keep the hard drive from burning itself up is the important thing.

How and where you mount the drive, is of little importance.

Umm... not really. The location of the drives makes a big difference in the cooling of the drives. I don't have any extra coolers on any of my hard drives, and the hottest one is my 200GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7. The highest temperature I've ever seen it at is about 45C.

In my experience, hard drive coolers like the one you showed help with temperatures, but also result in noisier computers. And for $4, the quality of the fans can't be very high....

[nitroshift]

I've got my hdd cooled as shown in the picture. Never went above 45 degrees centigrades. It's a WD 120GB 7200 / 8MB S-ATA drive.

[puntoMX]

Didn´t we see this subject a few months ago?

Or am I missing something (and no, it´s not a part of my brain ).

[Maleko]

got my 3 drives on the front of the case with 2 fans facing them....

[Kiki Burgh]

had to change the orientation of my hdds where it hangs vertically since my chassis provides little space than required ... then just used an ordinary auxiliary fan located near the back of the hdds ... so far no hdd overheats

[bonestonne]

occaisionally i plug in my second drive, but its usually just sitting in the case as my backup...the master hard drive hasn't moved since i installed windows, my dad hates this, but the case has 10 fans in it. two of them act as a hard drive cooler, pushing air across the case from the front to the back right over the drives. haven't seem them budge of 34 C...they're both hitachi deskstars, 7200rpm...after the recent addition of two more CPU fans [2 per CPU] i haven't seen it overheat, clocked 463MHz per CPU...i can go up to 503MHz, but then the numbers start to fly.

HDD coolers aren't as important as steady, constant and clear airflow. ribbon cables dont help. just get round, or learn to create them yourself. 40wire cables are better, as 80wire ribbons are much harder to do. [never gotten an 80 to work the way 40's do.

[LLXX]

I just tape a regular finned aluminum heatsink along with some thermal compound to the top cover of the HDD. There's an 80mm fan in the front of the case that blows past this.

[E-66]

my dad hates this, but the case has 10 fans in it.

Christ, what does that sound like?

I have zero case fans. I keep the side of my case off and have one 12" (305mm) fan blowing right into the case. No clue what the RPMs are, but it's low and I can barely hear it.

[Andromeda43]

my dad hates this, but the case has 10 fans in it.

Christ, what does that sound like?

I have zero case fans. I keep the side of my case off and have one 12" (305mm) fan blowing right into the case. No clue what the RPMs are, but it's low and I can barely hear it.

It's easy to see that some read my post and understood that I was just giving an alternative to loosing drives to overheating, and then some didn't. Most geeks, nerds and tech's have already developed their own remedies. But there are a lot of people who read these forums that don't even know what a hard drive looks like, or are not aware that they can indeed overheat and fail. Well, by now they do and know that there are alternatives to just letting a HD roach itself.

I sort of like the 12" fan solution. That's cool.....pun intended.

It's a bit like this solution, one of my friends sent me, for cooling an external HD that was running hot:

But whether you have just one fan, 7 fans like me or ten fans like "bonestonne", if the fans are clean and of decent quality, the noise factor will be negligible. I've seen many computers with only one PSU fan and one CPU fan that run a lot noisier than mine.

Ok, enough on all that.

Y'all have a great day and a Happy New Year now, Y'hear?

Andromeda43

[newsposter]

There are loads of quality, quiet fans with mounting hardware for disk bays.......

[bonestonne]

i'm not half as worried about the noise than the efficiency.

the side and top case fans are loudest, i can turn the top one down, and with noticable sound difference. the side fan, well, thats pretty loud, it came with the case, and if you look at the pictures i have of it in that topic, you'll see its on plexiglas, and i'm a little afraid of damaging it trying to replace the fan, which is something a lot of people would be scared of too...also, in a single CPU setup like a socket 370 or close to it, one of my CPU fans would make the case roar, but all 4 are pretty dampered by the case, so i'm not worried...but also, if you get used to it, its not too bad, i'd rather have a hurricane in a box than hell in a steel cage...i don't want this thing overheating, so i decided, why not just throw in more fans. you'd be amazed how hot Xeon processors get...its like running a 2.4GHz without a fan for two hours, then grabbing the heatsink...it burns...

but honestly, it comes down to whats more important, noise level or airflow...for me, it came to be airflow. i don't care if it makes a lot of noise, im usually around P4 systems that are 1.25" high, with one highspeed fan in the back thats supposed to keep the whole thing cool. [you should see how much dust is in it.]

its all a work in progress with computers i guess, trying to keep it cool, then trying to make it work more efficiently...its rarely hand in hand. i may run an old system, but its still a computer, just like all the rest.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/bon...r/HDDcooler.jpg

thats my cooling setup, a pair of 80mm case fans. theres a switch to turn them on/off, but only because i had no other way to get two fans working...

Edited December 27, 2006 by bonestonne

[LLXX]

My system has 7 fans and the noise is around 60dB, I don't mind though.

Any noise level that's low enough to not cause permanent hearing damage is fine by me.

[gamehead200]

It's a bit like this solution, one of my friends sent me, for cooling an external HD that was running hot:

That's the funniest thing I've seen all day!

[bonestonne]

My system has 7 fans and the noise is around 60dB, I don't mind though.

Any noise level that's low enough to not cause permanent hearing damage is fine by me.

i would agree that many fans would make the case loud, but 60dB? i kinda find that a little hard to believe. 72dB causes internal ear damage, 60 isn't that far off. i would say my system, with 10 fans might make it to 35 at the most...but unless you have a 5700RPM 80mm case fan, i doubt that your system is that loud. seemingly 60dB, but working with audio and being a little more realistic, -3dB is where most mp3's are recorded.