Hard drive heatsinks?

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Breex243

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 9, 2009
Messages
252
So I've been juggling some data around on my backup drives (using a SATA hot-swap rack), and after waiting for the drives to spin down, some models were still quite hot. I realized that I could sandwhich the hot drive between some cool ones and the hot one would cool much faster than just in an ambient setting.

I was wondering if a cheap and silent way to cool one's hard drives would be to sandwich powered on "hot" drives between old, dead hard drives. It would be interesting to see how drive temperatures are vs. the normal case design where a 120 or 140mm fan blows over the drive vs. fan +stacked drives. My current case allows for 5 SATA drives, but I put my drives in slots 2 and 4, which maximizes airflow over the drive and prevents the two drives from heating each other up. If the concept works, I think it'd be a nice and cheap way to make use of old hard drives.

If someone wants to carry out this experiment, and would like to write back on your findings, I've got a $5 bounty for such a study. There just aren't that many heatsinks that are like the ones for the Velociraptor (but in a 3.5in size). Attaching Velociraptor heatsinks onto 3.5in drives would be a great way to cool your drives...someone should start selling them separately.

Ooh, and BTW, I switched to a RAID0 array with Samsung F1s, and they are SOOO incredibly quiet and cool. I used to use one for backup purposes, but never noticed how cool they ran. Beats the hell out of my Hitachi Deskstar+Seagate 7200.10 setup. Both were hot like fireballs.
 
It wouldn't help too much even if they were touching each other. Maybe you should try Nexus FRIZZBEE or something like that.
 
Well I want a passive solution that can be used in a 3.5" space, so that rules out all HD mounting-type kits as well as the general HD fan-based cooler.
 
Why not just mount a couple 80mm fans in front of the drives? Even if there's only a few mm of airspace between the fans and the case, it'll still cool even the hottest drive down. See my solution for cooling two Samsung 1.5tb and a Raptor.

64FanAttached.jpg


The fan butts right up to the PSU when it's installed, runs at 5v, and it still lowered the temps of my drives by 10c.

And no, I did not cut a hole in the mounting bracket... Heh.
 
+1 on the read.
Also +1 on adding fans. I've modded expansion slot punchouts as supports before. With a dremel and care, you can make some pretty nice stuff.
 
that was interesting, it shows that when drives are new the temprature does not matter, but if the average is over 45c after 3 years it is around 3 times more likely to fail. than running at
35 - 40c

anyways i jsut blow a slow fan over them and they stay below 40c. (wd blacks, and a raptor)
 
I made my own custom HDD vibration killer/cooler solution out of aluminium U profile and some bits of rubber mounted to the sides (warmest point) of the HDDs. Seems to drop HDD temperatures by a few degrees. Haven't tried measuring its effect on the cooling after shutdown yet, if only because I hardly shut down any of my systems :p

I could try it on an external HDD though, I guess.
 
I don't see how sandwiching a hot HDD between two dead HDD will help. If anything it will simply hinder airflow. As for heatsinks, yes I tried passive solutions such as drive enclosures with heatsinks, and they would keep the drives cooler for a while, but eventually they would reach a certain equilibrium and thereafter heat up in the same way as drives outside of enclosures, and require active cooling. Still, I found them useful a few years ago. But with today's technology, it's not worth it.

There are better solutions. For a start, use modern HDD's and avoid your old hot running noisy HDD that end up heating up the other HDD's and wasting electricity and money. Modern 7200rpm HDD's are extremely cheap compared to old HDD, as well as far larger, much more quiet and cooler running (if you buy the right HDD), because the technology is so mature now. All you need is anti-vibration mounting (no heatsink) and you're fine. But if you're even more extreme and really into silence, low heat, but blazing performance, I'd avoid 7200rpm drives entirely.

My prefered solution is to use a noiseless SSD and combine it with a very low noise, cool running 5400rpm "green" HDD's like the Samsung F2 EcoGreen 1.5TB (much more quiet and cooler running than your F1's) that only need non-direct case airflow to cool. Best of both worlds: lightning fast performance combined with 3TB's of very low noise (silent in my case), low heat, and low energy consumption storage. No need to mess around with heatsinks or noisy active cooling.
 
Well any cooling device would reach some equilibrium--for example, my passive WCing system is idling at 43C on the CPU right now. In slightly hotter weather, I can expect temps of 47. In a cold room, I stablilize at 40, and even lower when I'm in the basement.

For cooling, if you have a large enough sink for heat, you'll be able to effectively dissipate excess heat, although maybe not as efficiently as a well-designed system (take Zalman's passive Reserators, for example. Barely any fins, but they're huge ones that do the job pretty well). I have a front fan blowing over my HDs, but I question whether a slow-moving, unfocused stream of air is as effective as a brick of a dead hard drive at dispersing heat.

I found that F1s are actually quieter than F2s (although the F1s run about 4C hotter), and the rotational latency on 5400RPM drives are quite disappointing. And yes, SSDs are great, but until the OCZ Colossus becomes standard fare for system builders, I'll be playing the waiting game. The X-25 just isn't that good of a buy when manufacturers are starting to realize that system builders want 3.5in SSDs (which means less chip density needed = cheaper storage). You can fit like 3 Laptop drives inside a desktop one, which theoretically means 1/3rd the price, or 3 times the storage at the same price...or even built-in RAID chips for even faster performance.
 
Breex243 said:
I have a front fan blowing over my HDs, but I question whether a slow-moving, unfocused stream of air is as effective as a brick of a dead hard drive at dispersing heat.
Click to expand...
You're still talking about dead hard drives helping to cool your other active hard drives? Look it's just a lump of metal and circuits which probably hurts your temps by restricting airflow to your working hard drives if you insist on sandwiching your working HDD by two of these things. In fact, this whole thread is just a strange attempt at humour right?

Breex243 said:
The X-25 just isn't that good of a buy when manufacturers are starting to realize that system builders want 3.5in SSDs ... You can fit like 3 Laptop drives inside a desktop one, which theoretically means 1/3rd the price, or 3 times the storage at the same price
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If I read that bit about SSD's seriously, and unless somehow you've switched topics, that makes no sense. So the physical size of the drive is what you look at, so because it's so physically small, it should cost less? I don't think and neither do you. Look if you're going for some sort of slow burning joke thread, or even attempting to be humourous in a positive way, it really isn't working, but I suppose I respect the attempt.
 
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echn111 said:
If I read that bit about SSD's seriously, and unless somehow you've switched topics, that makes no sense. So the physical size of the drive is what you look at, so because it's so physically small, it should cost less? I don't think and neither do you. Look if you're going for some sort of slow burning joke thread, or even attempting to be humourous in a positive way, it really isn't working, but I suppose I respect the attempt.
Click to expand...

Yeah, either I wasn't clear enough or you read it wrong, but the gist of what I was saying was something like, "Desktop users have 3.5in mounting slots---why should we have to use 2.5in SSDs? If manufacturers made a 3.5in 80GB SSD, the price should be theoretically 1/3rd, because they could use chips that were 1/3rd the density (and yes, I do know that it's more likely 1/2 or 1/4th). Alternatively, they could use chips of the same density, but fit three times as many of them for a respectable 240GB SSD. Now this drive should cost 1/3rd the price of a laptop 240GB SSD, because manufacturers can use lower density chips than the ones in laptop drive? So yeah, physically smaller drives = more expensive.

And regarding the dead hard drive deal--isn't a heatsink just a lump of metal? Sure, well-machined ones have lots of surface area, like passive 1U ones (which I think would be my best bet to cool off my HDs), but it's just a lump of metal in the end.
 
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