Any hard drive cooling tips?

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pazhman

[H]ard|Gawd
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Just picked up a 1 TB hard drive, I just wanted to keep it cool, any tips? It's on the bottom of 2 other hard drives but spaced out a little bit. I was thinking of just putting a fan or something behind it. Any tips? Thanks
 
I'd just use a standard fan. I've read that you may actually shorten it's lifespan if you run it too cool though (how true this is, I'm not sure)
 
qwerty30 said:
I'd just use a standard fan. I've read that you may actually shorten it's lifespan if you run it too cool though (how true this is, I'm not sure)
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Get some kinda airflow over the HDD, anything from a blower to a 200mm van or in between, just have some airflow of some kind as todays HDD"s run pretty warm even at idle.
 
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a very slow 80 or 120mm fan is enough to cool yours HDs in they are in the same cage.
 
Freezebyte said:
What a complete and utter pile of bullshit. Its when the drives get very warm to HOT is when their rated life drops. If your putting the drives into farking sub zero temperatures, well then, your really are a farking moron. :rolleyes:
.
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If you read the Google hard drive study, the least probable failure rates were seen with hards drives running between 40C and 50C. Anything above or below that, then failures become more probable.
 
Failures occur faster when there is more heat cycling (ie switching on/off).
The larger the change in temps, the more damage happens.
So its worth keeping the drives cooler if you use power saving on your hard drives or you power your PC off/on a lot.

My own experience (over 20 years) has been that drives with no cooling die much faster.
Drives with decent cooling hardly ever fail before the PC reaches the end of its life.

When you next buy a new case, get one that draws air into the case over the hard drives, ie Antec 900 and many many others.
Job done.
 
Freezebyte said:
What a complete and utter pile of bullshit. Its when the drives get very warm to HOT is when their rated life drops. If your putting the drives into farking sub zero temperatures, well then, your really are a farking moron. :rolleyes:

Get some kinda airflow over the HDD, anything from a blower to a 200mm van or in between, just have some airflow of some kind as todays HDD"s run pretty warm even at idle.
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Theres a way to disagree, and a way to come across as a totally uneducated trash mouth. You succeded on only one count, you figure it out.

That "complete and utter pile of bullshit" is based on testing. Honestly, after the way you responded, I find it hard to take anything you say of any importance.

To the OP, most people just use a fan on them. I believe Nenu is correct, I think the heat cycling and on/off/on/off seems to hurt them more than anything. ( Barring a fire, flood, dropping it while in an external enclosure, etc )
 
dydx said:
If you read the Google hard drive study, the least probable failure rates were seen with hards drives running between 40C and 50C. Anything above or below that, then failures become more probable.
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yep its like a car engine, they need to get up to a certain temperature and when your talking those tolerances and those bearings there is no point , a mild breeze over the drive to take heat away from the pcb and what not is all you need for drives
 
Those things that clamp down a big heatsink to the drive with the force of a thousand hammers are probably a bad idea, too. I bought one and the drive I forced it on died within a day.
 
dydx said:
If you read the Google hard drive study, the least probable failure rates were seen with hards drives running between 40C and 50C. Anything above or below that, then failures become more probable.
Click to expand...

Link in case any wants to read it.
 
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