Max operating temp for a hard drive?

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lilfiend

Supreme [H]ardness
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Nov 28, 2008
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i have a hm500li and its running at 48C-57C all the time, gets to 57C when i do things like scan the whole hard drive for bad sectors and stuff. It says its max operating temperature is 55C but i got this from a chick who had it in her laptop since she bought it, only reason she left me with it was she got a ssd.

so is this safe? its in my 1000he, is there any way to help cool it?

thanks!
 
Yea that's cutting it kind of close. My old Dell Inspiron 6400 was poorly designed in that the hard drive was right next to the video card, so the hdd temps were like yours too. It ran just fine like that for 2 years, but that's not to say you shouldnt do anything about it.
 
I have an old inspiron 5000. It runs at 57c most of the time. But it dropped my read and write down to around 13MB/s
 
RocketFast321 said:
I have an old inspiron 5000. It runs at 57c most of the time. But it dropped my read and write down to around 13MB/s
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im still getting high speeds from it. how close is it cutting it? is it like if i were running a phenom II 940be at 65C when the max is 63C? just trying to figure out if this is going to kill my hard drive in a few days or what. i like having 500gb in my laptop but if i cant have it then im going to put it into a machine that has a 320gb in it for trade :)
 
Hard disk temperatures should be kept at or ABOVE 35ºC, as temperatures lower than this in the first two years are actually more lethal to hard drives than temperatures above 45ºC. Optimum temperature range for hard drives is 35-40ºC according to a study Google did on their very large hard drive population (PDF link).

I suspect excessive temperatures (> 55º C) were responsible for killing off, in quick succession, two hard drives I had on my previous, very badly ventilated, case (good thing I am a sucker for backups!). I now have a Thermaltake Armor + case, and all my hard disks are currently running between 33 and 36º C, with an ambient temp of 25º C (29º C inside the case).

If you want, you can read more about my attempts at lowering component temps HERE. :)
 
Above 45C would be too warm and time to look into better cooling options.

The three HDDs I have in my system (Hitachi 80 GB, Samsung 250 & 750 GB) are between 29-35C with lots of airflow over them (one HDD per 5.25" bay).
 
JcRabbit said:
Hard disk temperatures should be kept at or ABOVE 35ºC, as temperatures lower than this in the first two years are actually more lethal to hard drives than temperatures above 45ºC. Optimum temperature range for hard drives is 35-40ºC according to a study Google did on their very large hard drive population (PDF link).

I suspect excessive temperatures (> 55º C) were responsible for killing off, in quick succession, two hard drives I had on my previous, very badly ventilated, case (good thing I am a sucker for backups!). I now have a Thermaltake Armor + case, and all my hard disks are currently running between 33 and 36º C, with an ambient temp of 25º C (29º C inside the case).

If you want, you can read more about my attempts at lowering component temps HERE. :)
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is this true?! cause my server harddrives idle 24/7 around 25-28C. even seen as low as 22C during winter @ night. time to turn some fans off
 
georgexi said:
is this true?! cause my server harddrives idle 24/7 around 25-28C. even seen as low as 22C during winter @ night. time to turn some fans off
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Lies, damned lies and statistics.

There's nothing wrong with running HDDs around the same temperature as a human would be comfortable with. Large datacenters have thousands of HDDs with an intake temperature of around 15C without massive drive failures. I think your HDDs will be fine :)
 
Well I can understand why running drives cooler may actually shorten life. The fluid is less viscous at low temperatures and therefore rubs harder on the spinning parts. Think of a car engine and how rough it runs when it's not up to operational temperature. You dont want to overheat it, but you also dont want to cool it too much.
 
dydx said:
Well I can understand why running drives cooler may actually shorten life. The fluid is less viscous at low temperatures and therefore rubs harder on the spinning parts. Think of a car engine and how rough it runs when it's not up to operational temperature. You dont want to overheat it, but you also dont want to cool it too much.
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If the bearings will wear out significantly sooner while still within specified operating temperatures, something is wrong.
 
alright, well i decided that i dont want something that hot im my laptop ;) i went back to my old 160gb that has one platter in it and installed ubuntu 9.10 instead of sticking with windows 7. all i have to say is ubuntu is really getting there act together, i started using ubuntu at 6.10 or something like that, and it wasnt all that good compared to xp, but ubuntu 9.10 here is outdoing 7 in drivers for me, even my arc mouse installed faster on ubuntu then in windows :)
 
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