do current harddrives benefit from the use of harddrive coolers?

[RayEarth]

I'm using a hdd cooler with my 30GB maxtor I brought 3yrs ago and the harddrive never had a problem. Would current hdd such as a 80GB 8MB maxtor benefit from harddrive coolers?

 

[wfbberzerker]

the hard drive doesn't directly benefit from a cooler exactly, the cooler helps if the hard drive gives off a lot of heat, so your case wouldn't be as hot.

cooler case = more stable system

 

[HalfCrazy]

I'm not using any hdd coolers in my system. The way my case was made there is three case fans blowing over the hdd's right now. Really don't need any coolers on my hdd's.

 

[Tab]

I dont really think your going to see a preformence increase on a basic ATA/133 Hard Drive if you use a cooler. However, systems with expensive SCSI setups do benifit.

 

[OulOat]

Originally posted by: wfbberzerker
the hard drive doesn't directly benefit from a cooler exactly, the cooler helps if the hard drive gives off a lot of heat, so your case wouldn't be as hot.

cooler case = more stable system

You mean your case will be hotter. Less heat given off = cooler case. But in any case, heat will affect your HD performance, but you won't notice it until it's sorta hot. That is why HD coolers are recommended for SCSI, because of their high RPMs, a lot of heat is produced, which will affect performance if not dissipated. Also, sometimes, even IDE HDs give off a lot of heat, like my stupid 5400 RPM WD. Before, everything would get slow whenever the HD gets hot, but as soon as I put a HD cooler on there, all the problems went byebye and the HD is never warm. BTW, HDs only need minimal airflow to cool them, a front case fan or el cheapo HD cooler will work fine.

 

[AluminumStudios]

I disagree ... I DON'T believe heat can have a tangible effect on HD performance.

Hard drives are mechanical ... they spin at a certain speed, their voice coils move their arms at a given speed (seek rate), etc.

If the temperature got hot enough to throw this precise mechanism off enough for you to feel a performance difference, then your system would hang, crash, blue screen, ie.) experience the effects of a hard drive failure ... at least until the drive cooled down some.

Heat can shorten a HD life though. Heat affects magnetic charges and I would surmise that too much heat could damage the platters (magnetically) causing bad sectors or even the hard drive to go kaput. Also, I can't imagine that extreme heat is good for the bearings/motor mechanism either.

My general rule is if the HD is hot to the touch then it's good to do something for the integrity of the drive and data. If your HD is only "warm" in your case then I would think it would be fine.

BTW - My one system has 3 hard drives in a bad case and they get so hot I leave the side open. My other system has 3 hard drives in a nice Antec case that has a fan that keeps them barely warm to the touch.

 

[RayEarth]

thanks for the info.

 

[Super6]

My IBM drives are all actively cooled and I haven't had one fail in the last three years as so many others have. Go figure.

Super6

 

[Kingofcomputer]

yes, harddrive is like machine or vehicle, the engine need to be cool when it's running.
server case has front fans blowing to the harddrive.
One of the front fan of my Compucase/HEC 6919 server case is at the harddrive cage, for harddrive cooling.

desktop pc doesn't operate 24/7, so no need to give direct cooling on its harddrive,
and there is air flowing inside the case to give air cooling to the harddrive,
same as old beetle using air cooled engine.

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: Tabb
I dont really think your going to see a preformence increase on a basic ATA/133 Hard Drive if you use a cooler. However, systems with expensive SCSI setups do benifit.

You think cooling a SCSI drive increases performance? It may increase it's lifespan but it is exptremely unlikely that there would be any performance benefit.

Thorin

 

[RanDum72]

You think cooling a SCSI drive increases performance? It may increase it's lifespan but it is exptremely unlikely that there would be any performance benefit.

Perhaps if you cool it down enough, there's a way to OC the RPM. Like 20k RPM😀

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: RanDum72
You think cooling a SCSI drive increases performance? It may increase it's lifespan but it is exptremely unlikely that there would be any performance benefit.

Perhaps if you cool it down enough, there's a way to OC the RPM. Like 20k RPM😀

Sure there is if you happen to have a clean room and then you replace the motor and retool the voicecoil and the read/write heads to be precise enough to write at 20krpm. However I doubt anyone here has the ability to do this since none of the industry leaders can yet. (Perhaps they 'can' but obviously it isn't practical or the drives would be on the market).

Thorin

 

[Mavrick007]

Originally posted by: thorin

Originally posted by: RanDum72
You think cooling a SCSI drive increases performance? It may increase it's lifespan but it is exptremely unlikely that there would be any performance benefit.

Perhaps if you cool it down enough, there's a way to OC the RPM. Like 20k RPM😀

Sure there is if you happen to have a clean room and then you replace the motor and retool the voicecoil and the read/write heads to be precise enough to write at 20krpm. However I doubt anyone here has the ability to do this since none of the industry leaders can yet. (Perhaps they 'can' but obviously it isn't practical or the drives would be on the market).

I disagree ... I DON'T believe heat can have a tangible effect on HD performance.

I believe that cooling does not affect performance also, but with the faster the drive, the more heat is created and will "probably" shorten the lifespan of the drive. This does affect the mean time to failure, but since drives can die right out of the box, it's still subjective to the machine. All companies seem to be concentrating on "how fast the drive can spin", but they should be concentrating on amount of data throughput at the same time as keeping spindle speeds down.

 

[dkozloski]

All hard drives are sensitive to heat changes because the platters and other internal parts change size and shape with each temperature change. The drives incorporate features that allow the drive to compensate for temperature variations between finite limits. R/W heads in old drives were driven by stepper motors that took the heads to a predetermined postion where it expected to find the data track. This worked because the spacing between tracks was very coarse. Modern drives use a servo system that senses the data track and applies correction information to accurately position the R/W heads over the correct track. The initial stage of the seek must be close enough to be able to see the desired data. If there has been a lage uncompensated temperature change, the drive may try to read data from an incorrectly identified track. The drive from time to time(every few minutes) does trial seeks as part of a temperatue compensation process whereby the servo system is calibrated so that the servo system knows where the tracks are. If the temperature of the drives is stable this calibration process is much simplified. I have been in the field of military and industrial electronics for at least forty years and if there is one generalization to be made about electronic equipment of all types it is that heat is your enemy. If you can't keep it cool at least keep it stable. There are a few extremely critical circuits that are operated in an oven in the interest of stability such as crystal clocks but they are the exception. You can't hurt your hard drive by using cooling fans on it and it may just make the difference between success and data loss.