• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

HDD docks and heat

R

Red Squirrel

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Nov 29, 2009
Messages
9,223
Is heat an issue on hard drives that are turned on for a long time (days) on a HDD dock? It sure feels very hot when I touch it.

I'm getting kernel I/O errors that start after a while during my backups, not sure if it's because of heat causing failure, or something else. Tried 2 different drives. I recently moved my drive dock from the basement to my office. I'm hoping it's not the USB extender is causing issues... bought it for this purpose. If heat is an issue, I will try to have a fan blowing on the drive or something, probably not too hard to wire that.
 
Is heat an issue on hard drives that are turned on for a long time (days) on a HDD dock?
Click to expand...
The type with a cover will bake a 7200rpm drive.

A 5400rpm green drive shouldn't get that hot in a coverless unit but I'm pretty anal about HD temps and would never run a mechanical drive for extended periods of time without active cooling.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Is heat an issue on hard drives that are turned on for a long time (days) on a HDD dock? It sure feels very hot when I touch it.

I'm getting kernel I/O errors that start after a while during my backups, not sure if it's because of heat causing failure, or something else. Tried 2 different drives. I recently moved my drive dock from the basement to my office. I'm hoping it's not the USB extender is causing issues... bought it for this purpose. If heat is an issue, I will try to have a fan blowing on the drive or something, probably not too hard to wire that.
Click to expand...

Drives can take under 60C without problems. I would blow a house fan on the enclosure and see if the problem goes away.
 
Another thing I forgot to mention, when i try to do a smart test, it says it's not supported. Is that even possible? I could understand if it was a 5MB hard drive that makes the lights dim when you turn it on, but this is a sata 1TB drive (model HD103UJ from Samsung). Has anyone ever run a USB dock through a USB extender before? I'm really hoping this is not my problem, but I'm starting to think it is. The problem started when I started using the extender. I don't have any more drives to test with, and I'm kind of weary of buying one now, if it's going to fail. Guess I can try the fan thing and hope for the best. Can probably tap power from the enclosure.
 
Another thing I forgot to mention, when i try to do a smart test, it says it's not supported. Is that even possible?
Click to expand...

Yes. This happens frequently on externals. It's not the drive not supporting SMART but the external enclosure not giving access to smart.
 
Ok just tried a fsck through directly attached usb and it works fine, so guess it is the USB extender that's bad. This sucks, I was hoping this idea would work so I could put the dock upstairs. Oh well.
 
smartmontools and other SMART-pulling software supports SMART via some USB-controllers...
 
Good to know about the USB enclosure thing and smart, at least I'm not going crazy. If I used esata it should work though right?
 
Cool, don't know if I even have an esata port on that server, if yes I will switch to that and forget the usb extender idea. Backups will be faster too.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Cool, don't know if I even have an esata port on that server, if yes I will switch to that and forget the usb extender idea. Backups will be faster too.
Click to expand...

An eSATA port is basically a SATA port with different connectors, a little more 'juice' and better shielding. Check it out here.

There's even adapters that can be used with a spare MB SATA port.

One thing you may not like is the maximum cable length of 2 metres (6.6 ft).....but ya can't have everything. :)
 
Last edited:
Old Hippie said:
An eSATA port is basically a SATA port with different connectors, a little more 'juice' and better shielding. Check it out here.

There's even adapters that can be used with a spare MB SATA port.

One thing you may not like is the maximum cable length of 2 metres (6.6 ft).....but ya can't have everything. :)
Click to expand...

Yeah pretty much what I figured. So internally in the drive dock the esata port probably just connects straight to the drive's sata port, while the USB needs some kind of converter kit and basically make it a mass storage device.

Also, I was googling more about hard drive docks and heat, and found this thread at another forum:

http://www.hv20.com/showthread.php?11810-WARNING!-Vantec-quot-Hard-Drive-Dock.-quot

I happen to have that exact dock. So guess my issue is in fact that it was overheating the drive and causing it to error out. It's cold in the basement vs up in the office, so it's the physical move that caused issues, not the USB extender, hopefully. I will rig a fan to it and see how it goes.

It is much slower with the USB extender though... 3 days to do a backup. Maybe I do in fact need to just forget this idea...
 
I'm thinking it's the drive. You'd think the drive's casing would act as a heat sink, but guess it's not enough. The casing gets VERY hot, like, you can burn yourself on it, so it probably melted the plastic.

So yeah, I'm going to want to put a fan on that thing. In the basement it's fine though. Also helps that the backup finishes faster so the drive is working less long, then is just idling till I go turn it off.
 
You're probably right.

What kind of drive is that?

The WD I'm looking at doesn't have any of the circuit board components uncovered. It looks like the bottom of the circuit board is exposed...not the top.
 
One of the drives I have is a seagate, that one gets VERY hot after a day or so. The other drive is a samsung. Both 1TB drives. I'm still getting kernel i/o errors at random so I have a feeling I may have botched both drives. May need to buy two more. I want at least two for the backup rotation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top