quiet cooling solution for individual hard drives ?

[Vesper8]

Hello all.

In the past 9 months I have had to RMA 3 brand new hard drives because of bad sectors and other failures. And now I'm about to rma a 4th one !

This is really making me sick inside my stomach... I figure that it may be caused by overheating at this point. I have a coolermaster stacker case with lots of fans inside. I also use a 4-in-3 hard drive case that came with the stacker. And i've fitted 4 hard drives in there so they are very close to eachother.. I figure this is probably a bad idea. Even with a fan sucking hot air from the 4-in-3 and blowing it out.. it's not a very fast fan.

So I've decided to expand a bit on room.. gonna use up 4 bays instead of 3 so my HDs have room to breathe. And while I'm at it.. I'm looking for a good cooling solution to insure all my HDs run cool in the future. I'm looking for something quiet.. not silent but.. not too noisy. I've seen a few so far but I'm wondering if any of you have anything to suggest ?

Thanks, I appreciate it

 

[Zepper]

It doesn't require a lot of air flow to keep HDDs at a livable temp. The fan on the front of the 4-in-3 cage should be blowing into the drives NOT sucking air thru the drives. If the perforated plates are still in place in the front of the cage, REMOVE THEM - they are VERY restrictive. The fan that comes with the Stacker cages are low and slow but should still be adequate to keep the HDDs happy with the mods recommended above, but you can get more oomph with nearly equal noise - see jab-tech or nexfan.com for some Yate Loon fans or click on the link in my sig for some nice Jamicons.

I had a CM 4-in-3 cage here for some time with 4 drive in it including some old and warm 10k SCSI drives. I used a strong NMB fan controled down to nearly quiet to keep them cool. I played around with all the holes in the cage and the mounting panels to get the optimum positioning for the drives. Don't take the markings on the cage as wrote. rotate the cage, rotate the mount plates, swap them side to side, etc. The CM Device Module Users Guide is useless in 8 or 9 languages...

I would suspect a gimpy or electrically-noisy PSU before I'd suspect cooling in this case. There is software that can read and display HDD temps from those HDDs that have internal sensors (most these days) - get and use it if you have reason for concern. The STC-T01 can hold two PSUs (and the others can too with minor mods) - consider it if you have a number of HDDs and other 12V accys. Cheaper and more effective than getting one whopper.

.bh.

 

[Howard]

What temps did the HDs report?

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: Vesper8
Hello all.

In the past 9 months I have had to RMA 3 brand new hard drives because of bad sectors and other failures. And now I'm about to rma a 4th one !

This is really making me sick inside my stomach... I figure that it may be caused by overheating at this point. I have a coolermaster stacker case with lots of fans inside. I also use a 4-in-3 hard drive case that came with the stacker. And i've fitted 4 hard drives in there so they are very close to eachother.. I figure this is probably a bad idea. Even with a fan sucking hot air from the 4-in-3 and blowing it out.. it's not a very fast fan.

So I've decided to expand a bit on room.. gonna use up 4 bays instead of 3 so my HDs have room to breathe. And while I'm at it.. I'm looking for a good cooling solution to insure all my HDs run cool in the future. I'm looking for something quiet.. not silent but.. not too noisy. I've seen a few so far but I'm wondering if any of you have anything to suggest ?

Thanks, I appreciate it

What Power Supply are you using? It could be something other than heat. PSU's have been know to eat HD's. Amongst other things...

 

[Vesper8]

i'm using a very good PSU.. see 'main rig' in my signature for full specs

i'm using the SEASONIC S12-500HT 500W ATX12V

i'm gonna be improving the heat dissipation for my HDs one way or another.. currently they are extremely close to eachother in the 4-in-3 coolermaster stacker HD case

like.. about 4mm seperate each HD.. and my HD case fan is sucking air out of the case.. but i've just been informed it should actually be blowing air from the outside into the case

and yea it sure does suck that I can't seem to find a reliable HD for the life of me... This is a seagate barracuda that's gone wrong this time.. the 3 previous failures were all maxtor drives

i think i might try a samgsung spinpoint to replace the seagate this time.. if ncix will allow it as they have in the past.. i've heard very good things about the spinpoints.. the IBM deskstars are supposed to be pretty good too

imo maxtor is the worse company for HD failures.. and since they bought seagate a while ago.. i figure seagate's quality will be going down now... just sucks

i look forward to blu-ray media being affordable so i can backup my precious data

 

[Zepper]

Actually Seagate bought Maxtor and according to a blurb I read recently they are going to continue to make them and promote the heck out of them in the retail channel. I recently bought a Maxtor 160GB unit so I certainly hope and expect that they aren't total crap.

.bh.