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Hard drive coolers

K

kudzu22

Member
I'm building a portable system and weight is an issue. I have 2 SATA drives and I have tried them with and without coolers. Without coolers they run hot - I can tough them but they are beyond warm. My external USB's run this hot all the time as do the ones in a 5 year old computer. Quite hot in fact. I also just changed one out of a laptop and it was hard to even hold.

With the coolers in use, they are very cool to touch. It might be said you cannot even determine they are on by temperature.

I've had a few HD's fail over they years, but prob within norms. The ones in the 5 year old computer are pretty darn hot and often on 24 hours and are still running 5 years later...

But a few summers ago even with an AC one of my external USB drives started giving errors as it go too hot (I live in a hot climate part of the year). Cooled it down and its been fine since.

I've read some articles and many seem to confirm that every 10 degrees in temperature makes a huge difference in reliability.

Also does heat have any effect on transfer speed?

Right now I'm building the system with the coolers - but they do add noticeable weight even though they are aluminum. Are they worth their weight?
 
Have you considered getting a case with a front 120mm fan blowing on the hard drives? I have a Lian Li case like that and my two SATA drives are at 28C according to speedfan.
 
HD's are mechanical parts so heat = wear and tear = reliability will definitely decrease.

But transfer speeds has nothing to do with heat.

From experience, HDD coolers offers least performance next to memory heat spreaders that you may just consider them marketing ploy.
 
Consumer hard drives are designed to be run for years inside cases at people's houses where they never open them and clean the dust out, never bother to check for airflow, et cetera. Even most OEM systems don't particularly allow for airflow over the drives. In other words, they're designed to be quite reliable despite running very hot. Laptop hard drives in particular are expected to run very hot because they get almost zero airflow.

Hard drive coolers aren't necessarily as pointless as heatspreaders on memory, but they also aren't an item that you should consider a requirement for a well-designed system. On average, drives with a cooler mounted might be more reliable by a statistically significant amount, but it's not such a large amount that it becomes economically significant. A fan mounted to provide airflow over the drives (from outside) is probably effective enough that you could not statistically tell the difference between that and an aluminum cooler, and would also help the temperatures of the rest of the system.

10000RPM drives are different, they aren't expected to be put in cases with crappy airflow by average consumers, and they get very hot so they at least need a nicely ventilated case and plenty of room for air movement, preferably with a fan directed over them.

Did your USB drive's case have a cooling fan or ventilation slots? Those cases tend not to have very much space inside or very good openings for airflow even by convection. Inside a larger case even with no airflow they at least have a large amount of air to let off heat into.
 
The case had two such fans. I didnt test it when mounted directly in front, but if I did I figured that would increase air temperature which was headed for CPU and video cards.
 
Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
Consumer hard drives are designed to be run for years inside cases at people's houses where they never open them and clean the dust out, never bother to check for airflow, et cetera. Even most OEM systems don't particularly allow for airflow over the drives. In other words, they're designed to be quite reliable despite running very hot. Laptop hard drives in particular are expected to run very hot because they get almost zero airflow.
Click to expand...

These are two 7200 SATA's. Size and weight are important. I just took off one cooler, its maybe 1/2 kilo, so x2 its adding an extra kilo. But I just had another thought the case is custom and one issue is its portable and will be making a lot of flights. The large amount of aluminum in the coolers in such a day an era may cause me a lot of grief in security....

I guess I'll try wihtout, but on temperature wise it was really amazig what they can do. They run COOL with them on, and just unplugging the power from the fans on the aluminum speader and wow they get hot.... not as hot as the laptop drive.. but still hot....

The laptops are voth used 16+ hours most days and are 2 years old and no failures. Last 10 laptops or so only 1 HD failure and it was a model that I later found to be problematic to many users (the HD).


 
Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
Hard drive coolers aren't necessarily as pointless as heatspreaders on memory, but they also aren't an item that you should consider a requirement for a well-designed system. On average, drives with a cooler mounted might be more reliable by a statistically significant amount, but it's not such a large amount that it becomes economically significant. A fan mounted to provide airflow over the drives (from outside) is probably effective enough that you could not statistically tell the difference between that and an aluminum cooler, and would also help the temperatures of the rest of the system.
Click to expand...

Ok had to go to computer store today for more parts, switches, cables etc. I decided to try one of the small HD coolers that just has fans, and no heat sink. They dont make the drive go to a 5.25 bay but still fit in a 3.5 with a little bit of overhead. And they have about the same effect believe it or not as the ones with the huge heat sink. Without them the HD's are blazig hot. With them, they HD's do not even get warm. If I flip them over, the bottom you can just barely feel warm at all, and the rest of the HD is down right cool. These new ones were like $6 and in fact were the more expensive one but from a company I know, vs just fans that might die in a few months.

So maybe still not needed, but these ones weigh just an ounce or so and are slim so they still fit in my case and keep the HD's cool... Sure cant hurt.

 
FWIW the ones I got go on top and have two small fans, vs the ones that go in front. Im not sure how well they would work as they have much less surface area to contact directly with air and much of the air I think would be dispersed.
 
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