How necessary is cooling for a 7200 rpm ide drive?

[bozack]

Just wondering if it was really that essential, I bought this drive a while ago (almost a year ago) and never bothered getting a cooling fan for it or anything. I currently have 2 80mm fans in an INWIN s500 case and my case temp is roughly 29c.

Is cooling really necessary for a 20gig 7200rpm ide drive? or am I fine without it. Any opinions/advice would be greatly appreciated thanks

 

[lenjack]

Older 7200's ran hot and could benefit form a cooler. The latest ones are a lot cooler. My 7200 Maxtor 13.6 barely gets warm without a cooler. WIth comp fully warmed up, remove cover and feel hard drive.

 

[bozack]

what would you consider older? mine is a 20.4 gb wd/ibm drive and last time I checked it barely got warm, never really went in to just check the HD but notice how everything is in there, I will check it out this weekend though.

 

[han888]

i use vantec ultimate cooller for my 2 hd, u can get it on 2cooltek, i think lan have the stock

 

[JamVega]

Well it's never really been proven, but it's the general concensus that if you use some sort of cooling device on your super-fast HD, then you can potentially help it last longer.

I mean, 7200RPM (and fast SCSI HD's) is really fast. Speed like that tends to heat up the HD, and the components inside of it do not appreciate heat. When things get hot, they Expand. And when they cool down, they Contract. Constant expanding and contracting will eventually wear it out. So if you have 'some' cooling on the HD, at least it will not Expand as much as it would if it didn't have cooling. So it's kinda like:

Without Cooling: EXPAND.contract.EXPAND.contract.EXPAND.contract...
With Cooling: expand.contract.expand.contract.expand.contract...

The change isn't quite as drastic, so the components won't get tortured as much -- and will thank you by lasting a bit longer! hehe. Cooling is just an insurance factor. You get it to hopefully prevent/delay/protect from the inevitable. You can backup all you want, but your HD will crap out on you one day. So better to have it later than sooner...

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JV
http://how.to/casemod

 

[bozack]

well guess then I will fork over the 16 bucks and buy that hard drive cooler from 2cool tek, just another fan to add to my system thanks guys for the advice.