How concerned should I be about cooling my hard drive?

[reitz]

I have a Maxtor DiamondMax 30 gig 7200 rpm drive. A friend gave me a hard drive cooler (actually a set of 3 fans in the face plate in front of the drive). It seems to work well, but the problem is that it's so damn loud. I'm extremely anal about noise from my PC, so I was thinking of taking it out. It is really necessary to have an extra fan on my hard drive? It gets quite hot to the touch, but I really have no way of knowing if it's in the acceptable range or not. Does anyone know of any guidelines to determine if a hard drive is overheating?

 

[Zach]

Don't bother, if it doesn't burn your finger it's fine.

The only drive I ever bothered cooling was an older 7200RPM SCSI drive I had, and I found that even that didn't need anything, since the cooler it had allowed air to be moved past the drive by the other fans in my system.

 

[Viper GTS]

I have two 7200 RPM Western Digitals right on top of each other in my Mid case, & they're fine. Most HD manufacturers list max temps to be around 55ºC, or 131ºF. I really wouldn't worry about a single IDE drive getting that hot. Heck, most drives don't get that hot even when enclosed in something like this.

Viper GTS

 

[pillage2001]

Who would actually buy that kinda case??

 

[Viper GTS]

Me. My new thing is making my PC as quiet as possible. Chopping HD noise by 90% sounds like a deal to me.

Viper GTS

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

If you really want to quiet your harddrive i suggest you buy the silent drive. You can find it at nedcomp.com. It is sweet. It has heat plates at the top and bottom that transfer the heat out and it encases the drive in plastic and foam so you cant hear it. My hd temp only went up 2 degrees!!