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Help cooling !!HOT!! WD SE HDD's

N

NokiaDude

Diamond Member
I need a "custom" heatsink/fan solution that will help cool my 80gb + 120gb Western Digital HD's. They run so hot that they will burn your finger if you touch them! Right now I have them installled in two 5 1/2 bays with adapters so they can have more space from each other. Putting them inside my Enlight 7250's HD "cage" makes them incredibly HOT!! I have a budget of $30 for this "project"
 
Use two of the Ultimate Hard Drive Coolers. If the price of the silver one holds out whenever they're back in stock, that'll keep you below $30.

Or, instead of that, you can do a little case modding - I did it on my secondary PC, minus the hard drive heatsinks. I sliced out a hole in two blank faceplates big enough for one 80mm fan. It effectively cools down two hard drives mounted in the 5.25" bays.
 
Active cooling helps a bunch. Point any quiet, inexpensive case fan at the hard drive from within the case and the temperatures should drop. Use velcro, hot glue, duct tape, whatever to hold the fan in place. Cheap and effective.

Also, typically the LOWER you mount the hard drive in a case, the LOWER the temperatures.
 
They shouldn't be too hot to touch. I've got 4 WD drives mounted in cage fairly close to each other, vertically. They get warm sure, but not scalding hot. And you say they're both like this? Make sure it isn't just one of them.
 
They run really hot. Today they're not hot enough to brand your fingers but their alot more "hotter" than "warm". I think I'll buy some Antec Corba IDE cables and try to mount them vertically on the floor of my case. It'll be my first case mod!
 
You can read the temp directly from the drives if they support SMART and I believe that the WD's should. There are utilities to do this, I believe "HDD temperature" is one (free for 30 days). Somewhere between 35 - 45 C is what you want to be at, the failure rate goes way up as temps increase on hard drives.
 
Originally posted by: NickF
You can read the temp directly from the drives if they support SMART and I believe that the WD's should. There are utilities to do this, I believe "HDD temperature" is one (free for 30 days). Somewhere between 35 - 45 C is what you want to be at, the failure rate goes way up as temps increase on hard drives.
Click to expand...

Motherboard Monitor also has an option in its Basic menu to look for hard drive temperature sensors. And it's free indefinitely, though the writers do appreciate donations for their hard work. 🙂
My temps are:
CPU 45C
System 30C
Maxtor HDD 35C
IBM HDD 32C
Room temp 24C

Both drives are 7200rpm; the Maxtor is a new 200GB thing, the IBM is a 120GXP 60GB. The Maxtor sits in a 5.25" bay, with an Ultimate Hard Drive Cooler attached to it (no fans though), while the IBM is cramped below the floppy drive, in an internal 3.5" bay.
 
All HDDs get pretty warm to the touch if they're not cooled. But many HDDs are used without cooling and you'll be fine without it (Deathstar was an exception). You may be able to increase its reliability and life by cooling it, but for the most part I think you'd be fine if you left it.

For reference, my Raptor runs at 53C and my 120GB Maxtor runs at 50C without any cooling. With a low speed fan blowing it drops it down to the low-mid 30s.
 
I recently posted this in a different part of the forum maybe someone here can tell me more?

I recently built a new system (see below) and after about a week of running great it started locking up.
After much research and trouble shooting I think I found the problem. I installed Speedfan and it showed my cpu and system temps were well within line,(cpu 38C at idle 48C under load and system at 34C). But the hard drive was hitting 54C at times, not sure what it was at time the system locked up. Is this a normal problem with these hard drives MAXTOR 6Y160M0? I put two fans blowing across it and now it runs at about 40C.
The first time the computer locked up I noticed it wouldn't even boot from the Windows XP cd it would get so far and lock up again. Could this too have been caused by the hard drive getting too hot?
I would like too know if I have a bad hard drive or if this is normal.

MSI 865PE NEO2-PLS Bios v3.6
Intel P4 2.8E 800FSB
550W max PSU +3.3v@28A +5v@40A +12v@20A
2 Kingston KVR400X64C3A/256 in dual channel
ATI AIW 9000 PRO 64MBDDR
Acer 8-4-32CDRW
Iomega DVD Writer
160 Gb Maxtor SATA
WinXP Home with all updates
all updated chipset and video drivers
 
54C is about right for a non-cooled HDD.

Probably wouldn't cause lockups if overheating, but data corruption. So my guess is no, it wasn't your HDD.
 
Maxtor shows 55C as max on this drive. Hope it continues to work ok. As for the lockups they have stopped since cooling the hard drive better. System and cpu temps haven't really changed much from before adding more fans in case for hard drive.
I'm puzzled over the lockups.
 
rather odd hds like that would heat up like that. your case must be lousy at cooling. the cage should be some what of a heatsink. i guess your only real solution is to buy a dremel and cut a fan hole. my antec clone case keeps hd's at ~30c. and i have 4 7200rpm drives. case fans are at hafl speed with fan controller.
 
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