Modern hard drive temperatures?

J

JungleMan

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Aug 20, 2001
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All right, so I've got to admit I'm a little old school. What do you say about running fans on hard drives these days? I see a lot of external HDDs (eSATA, USB2.0, etc) that are in passive cases. Good idea to run an external drive with a fan (there are a handful of cases out there that offer this) or unnecessary? With all the emphasis on "green drives" do modern HDDs run cooler than they used to? Thanks
 
I think current 7200 RPM HDs consume about 1-2W less than old ones while spinning at idle, and the 1TB Hitachis draw <5W then.

I install internal drives vertically beause it cuts the body temperature 1-2C and can make the hottest chips run 10-20C cooler, at least if they face outward. I drilled lots of holes in my IOmega enclosure to keep the internal drive cool, but I don't know if it's necessary, and current WD Elements external drives have no ventilation at all, even when they come with power-hungry Black drives. However a few years ago, one person mentioned that soon after he installed a WD drive in a Neo enclosure, it failed. Apparently a high-power chip burned out, despite the enclosure having a fan, possibly because the drive was mounted flush against the bottom so there was no air flow. I bought the same enclosure but placed spacers under the drive to raise it up about 1/8", but after reading that story I returned it to the merchant, Dealsonic, which was really good and they not only gave full refunds but also replaced the other person's HD.
 
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