How important is cooling the harddrives?

How important is harddrive cooling?

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HRslammR

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just wondering, about to make some changes to my case. just getting some info.

as it is, i have a pc-61, and i'm thinking about just removing the lower front fan, (so i can flip the harddrives around for yay cabling), and putting a fan on the floor of the computer for the video cards, and a fan on the side panel for the CPU. but the harddrives wouldn't have their own dedicated fan.
 
I always make sure I have some kind of fan for my HD's
Both of my cases have the coolermaster 4in3 HD bay with a 120mm fan blowing thru it.
I havn't seen my HD's get above 40C with the fan and that is in Colorado where yesterday the heat was 95F and my AC was on the fritz.

D.
 
For the harddrive itself cooling isn't important, a harddrive's pefromance isn't degraded by the heat it generates. But depending on the way your case is setup, some heat from the drives may affect other components, or ambient case temp. Particularly if you have 3 or more harddrives, or a small case, where components are close together. In these cases you might want to consider the heat factor. Even in a medium size case with 2 harddrives mounted directly on top of each other, as long as they're not right next to your vid card or other sensitive area, you shouldn't need any HD cooling.
 
hard drives generally should be kept below 50C. how you cool them and to what degree is much less important than keeping them in their rated opperational range. WD rates 55 C as their upper opperating limit.

you can keep drives adequately cool, without the use of fans, by simply spacing them out to promote passive air flow.

make sure that you have HDD SMART enabled in the bios, and have a look at what your drives run at now in windows, what they run at when you disable the fan, and determine what is needed to ensure consistently acceptable temperatures.
 
Not too important. Just a nice 120 in front of them, and they're happy.
 
very. I always have fans on mine... and not one (recent) drive has ever died on me. Sure, after 10 years or so theyll bomb out, but anyone who complains about HDD failure should look into how hot those buggers are getting..
 
I think it might depend on what type of hard drive you are talking about.

Most 7200rpm hard drives no not really need much air moving around them to stay cool, maybe a small fan for a couple of drives is fine keeps them pretty cool. If you start talking about raptors or scsi drives i feel your cooling should increase.

i know for my raptor i have a 120mm fan blowing right on it and it stays cool to the touch, take the fan off...and things get very hot very quickly.
 
if my drive gets above 30C i get kinda annoyed and somewhat freaked.

the mounting cage for hdd's can be a huge airflow blocker so in my case (lol pun!) i took out the hdd rack and just put my 160gb in the floppy drive area. sure it sticks out a little more and gets a little warmer (29C as supposed to 26-28C in the cage with the fan.

but the cage makes my gpu temp rise to like idle 47C (from 45C) and load past 70C (load is sub 70C)
 
I just make sure to put a fan on mine, it just helps my harddrive plus it might slightly help my other components as well, if I need extra cooling though I have a huge fan to put on my computer although I only used it a few times.
 
I used to have a fan on my HDs, but since I ditched the 10k rpm scsi setup, heat hasn't really been an issue, even with the 10k raptor.

I would appreciate a mid-sized nice case though with a spot for a fan for the hds. the Lanboy I've had for 3 years now works well enough without it, even with 3 HDs in the little cage.
 
i'm thinking about taking out the bottom front 120mm, since i'm planning on putting a 120mm on the side panel, and i have a 120mm on the floor of the case. just seems like i could do soem better cable routing with the room i'd create withj the bottom front fan gone.
 
I had 2 80MM screamers on my hard drive hotswap bay in my comcrap, but only because 10krpm SCSI drives tend to get toasty (like burn your fingers toasty).

7200rpm SATA drive in my computer, It gets warm to the touch and nothing more. No fans for it, no need for cooling this thing.
 
HRslammR said:
i'm thinking about taking out the bottom front 120mm, since i'm planning on putting a 120mm on the side panel, and i have a 120mm on the floor of the case. just seems like i could do soem better cable routing with the room i'd create withj the bottom front fan gone.
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that's very nice, but you still have not answered how hot they're getting!

cool the drives well enough to keep them in within rated opperating limits, however you choose to go about it!

how important is it to keep you drives withing their rated limits? VERY!

how much cooling does that take? not very much.

is what you have enough? measure and see!

is what you want to do enough? measure and see!

how hot are they getting now? how hot do they get when you stop the fan, without changing anything else? how many drives do you have? what type of drives do you have? how many bays of what sort do you have available?
 
The hard disk is the only mechanical device in a PC required for its function.
As a high spec mechanical device it is the component most prone to failure (under normal operating conditions).
If it is not cooled enough the rate of failure increases significantly.

There are many modes of failure due to heat:
1) the disk platters can expand too far allowing the magnetic disk tracks to move too far for the heads to track (remember IBM Deathstars ;))
2) magnetic devices are less effective with higher temperature so the magnetic recording wont appear as strong
3) all moving devices will be subject to higher wear at higher temps, this includes the head assembly, spindle and bearings.
4) the lubrication will be thinner at higher temps and less effective at preventing mechanical wear.
5) the lubrication will deteriorate faster the higher the temp (possibly becoming corrosive?).
6) any corrosion/deterioration will occur faster at higher temps. ie rubber seals degrading, interactions with the lubricating oil...
7) the electronics will fail a lot earlier. Silicon circuits alone degrade twice as fast for every 10C increase in temps.

no doubt there are more modes of failure...

A hard drive without any air flow around will reach really high temps on the outside such that you cant touch it!
The temps inside the drive are way in excess of the outside temps so you can imagine the damage being caused.

Its not important to blast air onto a hard drive, just enough to prevent heat build up.
The air should not be recycled within the case, there should be a flow of cooler air blowing onto the drive.
 
I've always cooled my drives...

hard drives are very precisely engineered... did you know that the seek heads are aerodynamicly designed? so much to the point that only about 2 companies make them!
the heat changes the density of the gases in the hard drive, wich I amagine could have an adverse effect on the oporation of the drive. on top of that, it was mentioned before that magnets HATE heat.
 
t2dxk0 said:
For the harddrive itself cooling isn't important, a harddrive's pefromance isn't degraded by the heat it generates.
Click to expand...

The lifespan of any mechanical device (moving parts) is going to be adversely affected by heat - your hard drive is no exception.

Personally, I value my data, if not my hard drive itself, therefore I always place the drive where it's going to get the most airflow. I know I would not remove direct cooling from my hard drive for the sake of neater cable routing.
 
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