RESOLVED WITH FANS: Casual question about enterprise-class HDDs and temperatures

[BonzaiDuck]

[See Post #10]
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There were times over the last decade or so when I contemplated buying "enterprise-class" HDDs -- for instance, I think there was a Western Digital model-line "RE". But, given the prices, I opted for consumer-class HDDs.

If anyone gets the regular e-mail announcements from Newegg, perhaps you have seen the recent ad for a 3TB Hitachi 7K3000 Ultrastar "refurbished" HDD that was "on sale" for ~$50 each. I picked up two of them, and just finished installing them in a Win 2012R2 Essentials system which will replace my (very) old home server. I have two Seagate NAS 2TB HDDs I'm going to pull from its drive-pool -- operations are currently "under way."

The Hitachi drives were installed at the top of a drive cage that held the two Seagates, one on top of the other. The drive cage is ventilated as well as possible with two front-panel intake fans. Temperatures on the Seagate drives had so far been in the 32C to 35C range. At the time of formatting, I noticed the Hitachi drives topping out at 43C and 46C respectively. After formatting, and without noticeable difference between idle and the rebalancing of the drive pool, temperatures settled down to around 42C to 43C, the warmer drive identified as the one on top of the stack.

Can I expect "enterprise-class" drives such as these 7K3000 units to run warmer than the Seagate NAS drives -- without considering these other factors about drive placement and activity?

 

[XavierMace]

The 2TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives are 5900rpm drives. The Hitachi is a 7200rpm drive, so yes it's going to run hotter. It doesn't have anything to do with being Enterprise drives.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

The 2TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives are 5900rpm drives. The Hitachi is a 7200rpm drive, so yes it's going to run hotter. It doesn't have anything to do with being Enterprise drives.

Well -- maybe that's close enough. These 2TB Seagate NAS disks preceded the IronWolf model-line. I can't remember their RPM spec, but it could well be as you say. And it makes perfect sense. I remember some advertised SCSI disks that ran at 10,000 -- maybe even 15,000 RPM for some models -- and you really had to give attention to ventilation for those suckers.

I likely had forgotten my Seagate NAS RPM spec, so that explains it.

I'd really like to see my disks showing thermals below 40C. I'll look into spacing and placement, and then my fans . . . .

 

[rchunter]

I've got a few HGST Ultrastar drives in my server He8 & He10 drives and they run very cool. Just as cool or cooler as my 5400 rpm WD Red drives. I suspect these Ultrastar drives are newer technology so even though they run at 7200rpm they still run very cool.

Most of my drives run between 30C-33C. On very hot days a couple might get up to 35C but that's the hottest they usually get. I have my fans set to ramp up when necessary.

 

[Billb2]

Instead of comparing the temps of two drives (useless info) why don't you look up the temp specs for what you have?

Note that studies have shown that drives run at the higher end of their temp specs tend to last longer.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Thank you RCHunter and BillB2.

I took some time of my own to dig a little deeper, and in fact -- that was my intention posting this thread. You are absolutely right about "useless info," but it was the only indicator I had.

The case I'm using apparently wasn't meant for stacking four or five HDDs on top of each other. But it was "a case that I bought and had for a spare." To be more specific: the Corsair Vengeance C70 has less-than-stellar disk ventilation than some other cases, such as my old CoolerMaster 830 Stacker. That case -- which is the total concept for my recent Skylake system -- is ideal for hot-swap bays or internal cages facing the intake airflow of the front case fans. With the Vengeance, I added two ML120 fans to the just-sufficient space between the case frame and front-panel, which is also filtered. The Vengeance came with two 120mm nothing-special fans on the interior side of the lower drive cage, and I had removed them.

So beginning tomorrow with my Egg delivery, I am reinstalling replacement fans of Noctua 120x15mm "slim" fans that seem to have also a quiet reputation. If I can lower the drive temperatures by 3C to 5C, I will achieve a "sweet spot" which you also have mentioned and I will only summarize here.

The Google white-paper statistical review of some hundred-thousand hard disk deployments from their SMART data concluded that temperature had less to do with failure than some other variables, with only any noticeable effect on longevity above the drive's maximum spec. In general terms, drives running too cold below ~25C tend to show increasing failure rates and shorter lifespans with progressively lower temperatures starting at that threshold. Especially, there is a sweet spot at between 30C and 40C where failure rates are at a low point. Between 40C and 45C is considered "acceptable." Above 50C is considered "hot."

But the Hitachi 7K3000 3TB runs at idle around 37C to 39C for three of four such drives in my case. Another drive idles at 42 to 44C, and its placement in the case between another drive and a flat metal cage surface explains why its temperature is higher.

Even so, when running full-bore with it's spec maximum sustained throughput over hours, its temperature peaks at 47C.

As much as my case selection affects the problems to surmount, the fans may resolve the problem -- if you could call it a problem.

Once I had tried a pair of these Hitachi 7K3000 drives, I also obtained some decent intelligence about their origins as "refurbished" offerings through the Egg together with GoHardDrives. It is likely that some big corporations purchased a supply of these drives for their IT department, when improvements in technology and drive-size drove them to a decision of turning over their surplus IT assets.

So it is very likely that these are brand-new drives in original static-wrap OEM packaging, but their original 5-year-warranty cannot apply if they were passed on by the original purchaser. that's when I decided to pick up another pair of them at $50/each, before the markdown sale ended. The regular GoHardDrives offer price was more like $110.

 

[rchunter]

I think if you were to buy some of the newer flavor Ultrastar drives you would find your temperatures to be a lot better. The new ones are helium filled and do run a lot cooler. (Especially He10, it's the coolest 7200rpm drive i've had so far) Even so, I wouldn't worry too much about it, sure you should try and get your temps down as much as you can but I think those older drives are meant to run hotter anyway.

 

[Soulkeeper]

I own two of the toshiba enterprise drives (very similar design to the hitachi ones).
They do run a bit warmer than any other spinners I've had, this is just because of the controller/pcb design. I wouldn't worry as long as you have good case airflow, it's normal. I'm happy with my drives.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Well, I'm telling myself that if the drives showed "Power on hours" at 0, and the "intel" I got about the surplus corporate assets is true, I got a helluva bargain on these bad boys.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

So. . . .

In sum, I was worried about the Hitachi 3K7000 hard drive temperatures, with two of the drives showing between 40C and 47C under loaded operation. The spec range for the Hitachi units has a maximum of 60C. The Google hard disk study concluded a sweet spot between 30 and 40C, with a surprising observation that higher temperatures were not by themselves a causative factor in higher failure rates.

The less-than-ideal case used for this project was a Corsair Vengeance C70. The lower, internal drive cages have less than stellar ventilation. This would probably explain why Corsair ships the case with two 120mm "nothing-special" 3-pin Corsair fans MOUNTED AT THE REAR OF THE CAGES. [I had removed them and installed "pusher" fans which just fit between the case frame and front-panel.]

So I improved over Corsair's intentions, and purchased these Noctua slim-line 120mm fans:

Noctua 120x15mm fans

Tedious work, but I thought I'd have to remove all the disks before attaching the fans. A handful of 1-1/4" nylon screws with threads fitting the holes in the case meant I didn't have to do all that. I was able to eliminate transfer of vibration to the case by wrapping much of the screw length with silicon-rubber hose-bandage. Nice work!

I'm impressed with these skinny Noctua fans. Very quiet, but hefty air-flow. Now my drive temperatures are 35C, 36C, 35C and 37C. Let me see a minute what happens when I run a scan on the hot drive to make it work harder . . . .

. . . . I can't detect much of any change in the drive temperatures. I don't think the drives are going to run any hotter than 40C in the future. Before adding the Noctua fans, the hot drive would idle at 43C and stress at 47C. Mission accomplished.