How cold is too cold?

[Red Squirrel]

I have a drive dock in my basement hooked up to my server via esata which I use for backups. The drives get lot of on/off because of how they are used for backup. It's about 9 degrees down there, is this bad for the hard drives to start in such temp?

 

[staticlag]

google says they should be around 34C IIRC

Better that they are on all the time in that temp, the startup heating to temp is what would cause the most wear.

 

[Red Squirrel]

hmm so these drives are probably under lot of stress then. Almost daily I will do a rotation so it starts up, does a job, then I stop it later on. I tend to let it warm up before I fire up the job though, if that helps.

Guess this is probably why tapes are better. Later on when I have the money I might get a tape backup system instead of using hard drives.

 

[Colonel_Panic]

My guess is that colder temperatures are ok, so long as there is minimal temperature cycling and low humidity. I asked a similar question about the 5 drives in my home server and the common response was to keep the drives above 30 degrees. Mind you my drives are on all the time, so that might change things.

 

[evilsofa]

Finally found a good answer here:

"Hard drives have fluid bearings. Any fluid can freeze if it gets cold enough, including the lubricant inside the hard drive. If the hard drive starts to spin up (which happens as you boot your PC), the platters will not turn because the fluid isn't viscous enough to allow the platters to spin at the proper speed. As a ruslt, your computer will either not boot at all with an error at POST or it will boot up and give data access errors once booted."

The other typical concern with operating electronics in cold temperatures is condensation, but that could only happen if the hard drive is significantly colder than the ambient room temperature (look up "dew point" on wikipedia if you doubt this). Since the hard drive is staying in the basement, condensation is not going to be a problem.

 

[larrymoencurly]

WD says the lowest allowed operating temperature is either 0C or 5C, but I can't find information about humidity, and I'd really want to keep drives and any electronics at least 3-5C warmer than the dew point.

 

[sadbuttrue]

Based on the google HDD study a few years ago:

The study did show, however, that new hard drives (typically within their first 6 months) were more sensitive to temperature, but after the initial break-in, temperature related failure rates remained balanced until the drive reached the 3 year old mark.

On a surprising note, the study concluded that there was a clear trend showing lower temperatures (around 68 Fahrenheit) did increase failure rates.

Which shocked me, as my drives are idling at 13c/55f right now. Time to turn some fans off

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hmm so seems to me I should be ok then. The basement is bone dry in the winter so humidity wont be an issue. If I turn on the dehumidifier I do not get a single drop. I get a bit more humidity in the summer though but then cold is not a big factor. The cold water lines tend to condense a bit but that's all.

I do recall that Google study as well though, but think the drives are broken in quite a bit. They may be approaching their 3 year mark though. In the long run my HDD backup solution is probably still cheaper then tapes even if I do get slightly more failures.

 

[sadbuttrue]

Interesting thing happened today. I reconnected the fans when rebuilding my PC and the HDs were idling at a frosty 11c. Both are Samsung F3 7200rpm drives. For some reason the write speeds were incredibly poor. I tried rebooting in safe mode, running from a different O/S, changing bios settings etc. Nothing helped. Then I turned some fans off, made a cuppa and tried again a while later. The HD was now running at a much warmer 23c and write speeds had returned to normal:

HD sensor 11c - Read 130mbps Write 30mbps
HD sensor 23c - Read 130mbps Write 130mbps

I then turned the fans back on at a slow speed and without a reboot. I tested again at each drop in centigrade. The write speed was 130mbps until temps dropped below 20c. At 19c the write speed was 30mbps. I tried taking the temperature above and below this point a few times to be sure I wasn't going mad.

So in summary, running the Samsung F3 7200rpm drives below 20c results in 30mbps write speed. Why? Some kind of built-in protection against trying to write at such low temperatures? Or possible a mechanical issue from low temp lubricant?

 

[Old Hippie]

Why? Some kind of built-in protection against trying to write at such low temperatures?

I'm pretty sure electricity flows slower at low temps.

11c is @ 52f. Is it that cold where you have your computer?

No wonder you needed a cuppa tea!

PSSSS....I'm sure the lubricating oil's viscosity is higher at lower temps but I would think that if the drives ran awhile everything would return to normal operating temps and the speed would be OK.

But from what you're saying that's not true.....I take that back..it is true.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Heat makes molecules move faster, so that explains it. If you can get the drive to a temp jsut below it's melting point, you will get maximum performance.