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Is a hard drive fan really necessary on a 7200rpm drive?

there are some people who conjecture that active cooling is necessary for IBM HDDs in order to keep them from failing.

I installed my HDD in the lower cage of my Lian Li case, right in front of the dual case fans. So, its not realy necessary, but I figured why not? ...might as well take advantage of those huge case fans for some kind of active cooling.
 
Makes no difference.. i still have hd fail under fan, a lot of them... so not necessary... it's good for lowering overall air temperature in a case, ie keep the air circulating but no test has been done or proven that I know off.. but still I keep mine nice and cool 🙂
 
You can check yourself.
Run your computer for a while. Do average work. When you turn it off, immediately open the case and touch the top metal part of the HD.
If you burn your fingers, get a fan. If it is very hot, but bearable get a fan or passive heatsink. If it is mildly warm, leave as is.

The Barracuda IV is one of the warmest new drives, and does not need any extra cooling. Early 7.2 kRPM drives did need cooling though.

One of the servers delivered to us had 2 IBM 10k SCSI drives with no cooling at all - was equipped with cooling immediately.
 


<< As long as you have proper airflow thru your case, you don't need any kind of active HD cooling. >>

 
HDD cooling is a joke on 7,200rpm drives and below. While 7200rpm drives are able to make fair amounts of heat, I would find it very unlikely that the heat could kill the drive unless it had some type of defect to begin with. Also, if you want to do drive cooling, I would recomend placing your drive/drives in a 5.25" slot and getting a drive bay cooling device, that would be more effective than placing a flat fan on top of the drive.
 
No.
CPU's come with heatsinks, because the manufacturer deems it necessary (well, retail version anyways) and hard drive manufacturers give you a warranty and don't say anything about cooling, so I guess if they will warantee a hard drive that isn't cooled, then it's definately not necessary.
People are just crazy about buying stuff.
 
No, not needed.

A normally vented and cooled PC case is all that is needed. The HD temps should not even approach what the HD is rated and tested under if the case is properly cooled.
 
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