really hot hard drive = failure?

[asuh]

I am running two WD 120GB hard drives in portable bays in the 5 1/2 inch slots so I can transfer them to and from. Well, I've had problems with a hard drive and I'm curious to know if it's heat. Not every day, not all the time, but every once in a while, possibly after a big load, my hard drive starts stuttering like it's trying to shut down or cycling. You can see the hard drive light flicker on and off in a steady pattern. And I think you can hear a little clicking.

I don't know much about the internal part of the hard drive but my suspision is that it's so hot that it's starting to fail. Should I be concerned about this? I thought I had good airflow because there's a fan at the back blowing either in or out of the bay, not sure which one.

Any suggestions?

 

[Lord Evermore]

Well, stuttering like that is quite common and sometimes a scary sound/sight after lots of transfer as drive caches are emptied or Windows caching is emptied. The light flickering would indicate that it's actual data transfer happening, not the drive failing. The clicking may just be normal seek noises for the particular patterns it's running, which you may not notice in other situations.

I don't know if WD drives have an internal thermal diode, but if they do then there are lots of programs available that can read it.

Hard drives are capable of enduring quite a lot of heat without failing. Western Digital's own documents list 55C (131F) as the upper limit. The drive will be hotter than the ambient case temperature, but not so much that it would cause failures normally unless it were in a highly enclosed space with no airflow.

The drive will probably be quite warm to the touch, but that's not really an indication of problems.

Unless you're losing data, or generating a consistent and quite loud clicking, I don't think you're having any problems, you're just paranoid because so many people are so paranoid about heat and airflow and the like causing failures, and they spread it around. Yes it can cause failures, but normally it doesn't.

If the drive were already defective in some way, then excess heat could accelerate the final failure. But the drive would have failed eventually anyway. Assuming a drive that's free of defects, on average moderate heat isn't going to cause a failure. But the odds are that SOMEONE will have a drive fail relatively quickly, so it's not impossible that yours is failing, just unlikely given the description. Having the fan in their is most likely plenty to create enough airflow, as the drives are designed to run without even that.

 

[asuh]

I think I forgot to mention that this stutter happens with both software and hardware. I'm using my computer normally, the hard drive is working properly. Suddenly without warning, the hard drive light starts blinking at a consistant beat and when I'm in Windows, the mouse suddenly freezes. A few seconds later, it unfreezes. 3 seconds later, it freezes for about 5 seconds. And so on. I let this process go on and on but it never stops. So after a few minutes, I just reboot the computer.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Okay, well, that is weird. Not necessarily drive failure, but something wrong. If the drive was failing, I don't think the light would blink, because that is controlled by the IDE port activity. If your drive just moves to park itself or something like that (like one line of drives from I forget which company, which would occasionally move the heads across the entire platter to realign and evenly wear), then the light would probably not come on as it isn't data transfer.

It's probably a software issue, but I can't imagine what.

 

[asuh]

well, i might be a software issue but i think i even reformatted my hard drive and it did this after the reformat. I'm pretty sure I can say that it only happens when there's a huge amount of load, as in i'm opening a few gigs worth of a project on one of my software. And then after i reboot the drive, it'll start up on its own sometimes. I would imagine this is definitely because its getting pretty hot because of load transfer.

Also, when it starts cycling like I explained, on start-up the RAID won't detect the drive like it usually does. I have a kx7-333R.

Because my drive is in the 5" bay and in a removable drive bay, I can shut the bay down and turn it back on to stop the cycling after I reboot the computer. Maybe it has to do with being in the bay?

 

[Lord Evermore]

Possibly, but I really don't think excess heat generated by the loading of large files is an issue. Even in normal circumstances I wouldn't consider it a possibility, but being inside a bay nest with all that open space compared the a normal 3.5 inch cage, including a fan blowing on it, I can't imagine heat being a problem. I'm pretty much out of ideas.

 

[everman]

You should be able to see your HD temps with motherboard manager 5. It takes a little setting up (and may need to enable SMART monitoring in bios).

 

[asuh]

i don't have a copy of that software.

 

[EeyoreX]

You do now!

\Dan

 

[asuh]

maybe the website is down but it's not letting me go there...

 

[asuh]

so i installed the software but don't know what SMART monitoring is. What do I need to see in order to monitor HD temps? thanks.

 

[jaeger66]

WD drives do not have a thermal diode, so you can't monitor the temps through a SMART tool. I have a pair of the 120JBs and they got almost alarmingly hot, so I just stuck an 80mm fan in front and all has been well for over a year.

 

[Siddhartha]

About 10 months ago I got a new 80 gig WD hd and my system would periodically say it was hooked up and not hooked up. Once when my system was not seeing the hd I touched it to feel if it was running and it was very hot. I iattached a $15 CompUSA hd fan to it and have not had any problems with it since.

 

[asuh]

thanks for your replies. the biggest problem with your solutions is i can't fit a hard drive fan into the bays. I have my hard drives in the bays because of the portability and exchange factor. It's quick and easy access.

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: everman
You should be able to see your HD temps with motherboard manager 5. It takes a little setting up (and may need to enable SMART monitoring in bios).

LOL

Motherboard Manager

Kinda has a nice ring to it

Motherboard Monitor mate


Your problem will be windows related. I had similar issues where I had a virus causing similar problems to that.

It was using ALL my resources therefore making everything LAAAAAAAaag.

 

[asuh]

so you think it's the software, DannyBoy? The more I play with everything, the more I think it might be a combination of software and heat. It usually happens after my hard drive has been transferring files for a little while. And then I guess the drive is so hot that it'll continue doing it even after I reboot and before I get into Windows. So it's not just happening in the Windows operating system, it also happens right after bootup, as though it's continuing its lag from before.

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: asuh
so you think it's the software, DannyBoy? The more I play with everything, the more I think it might be a combination of software and heat. It usually happens after my hard drive has been transferring files for a little while. And then I guess the drive is so hot that it'll continue doing it even after I reboot and before I get into Windows. So it's not just happening in the Windows operating system, it also happens right after bootup, as though it's continuing its lag from before.

It could very well be heat, but unless the temp of the drives is in the 60's upwards, I dont see how there could be any performance drops JUST purely from temperature....

But, seeing as other people have had similar problems, I recommend you try running the Hard Drives:

1) Out of the Removable bays
2) With a fan out of the bays.

If your problems still persist after trying that then re-post on this thread

Dan