Raid5 Cooling

[PoW]

I have a 5 disk raid 5 array and I have had the second disk failure in about 3 weeks. This would lead me to believe it is a cooling issue. Does anybody have proven suggestions on hard disk cooling. These drives are always on and noise isn't a big issue.

I don't care about flashy blue lights or temperature readouts, I just want something that keeps drives very cool. I have a midtower with 4 5-1/4 bays free. My best guess is 4 individual drive coolers and then a fan on the 5th drive in a standard 3-1/2 drive bay.

I am currently using this device: http://store.yahoo.com/directron/dk0357ss.html which im not impressed with anymore. The drive that sits in the left most bay has died twice. Completely unacceptable. Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[arnemetis]

I proudly own one of these super micro babies here It has a 90mm fan which cools the drives quite nicely. if the fan is too loud for your tastes, it can always be replaced, but it does cool the drives well. If a drive has died in the same spot, id be far more suspect of a faulty part on the controller board in the enclosure rather than heat. unless your sata drives are all raptors, it shouldnt be generating absurd amounts of heat. I use mine in a software raid with 3x 200gb drives, which i swap on a fairly regular basis with a friend of mine, who has 6 of these bays he loves them so much , one on his gaming machine for his 2x raptors, and 5 in his 9U multi-terabyte server. while you have mentioned you dont care about flashy lights and what not, it does have leds that depending on the software/raid card used, can be very useful for identifying problems. Im just using the cheapest 4 port sata card I could find, and it runs perfectly, ripping drives out doesnt even so much as slow down the mouse. (unless they were being accessed of course ) Hope this helps, any more questions about this specific enclosure and ill be glad to answer them.

 

[Aronj66]

I use the Super Micro unit as well with no heat issues. I have it full with 5 120's in raid 5. Of course mine is in the basement and the room is pretty cool. Maybe the smart fan in yours is not soo smart? try powering the fan directly so it runs full speed.