Safe temperature for Hard Drives?

[superfastkyle]

I have 5 Seagate hard drives in my full tower case. Boot drive is a first gen SATA. I have a almost new 1.5tb seagate SATA, and 3 IDE seagates. My power supply is directly above them with a horizontal fan blowing out the back of the power supply. My stock amd cpu fan, and thats it, no case fans. Processor (45watt dual core) is at the bottom of the case with the powersupply and hard drives at the top. Do you think this is dangerous to be running without case fans? I'm a little worried myself but the case fans that came with it are pretty loud, and without it. the only thing I hear is the hard drives, which is nice since its a htpc along with being my server.

heres what my smart readings say

HD 1
48 High of 56
HD 2
46 High of 54
HD 3
49 High of 56
HD 4
49 high of 56

Are these acceptable temps?

 

[alcoholbob]

Mine reads 40-42C throughout the day with a 79F ambient.

I'd say you are fine, HDs are known to be fairly heat resistant.

 

[jdkick]

As far as I know, the max operating temp of most desktop HDDs is 60c - the "high of" temps you posted are pushing close to that. I'd probably do something to bring the temps down a bit, like adding a case fan or two to move a bit of air across the drives. As for noise, there are plenty of low speed/quiet 120mm fans on the market... Scythe and Yate Loon for example.

 

[faxon]

i killed 2 seagate IDE drives running them in a setup like that, only i did have case fans and they still overheated and died. my 3 remaining seagate drives are all 7200.10 barracudas and they run nearly twice as hot loaded as my Vraptor does, which is rediculous. the number one thing i have seen to kill drives after a shitty power supply or excessive Gs is definitely heat. i would put some case fans in there, or if your case is just really old get a new one with a 120mm fan blowing air across the HDD mounting area(s)

 

[Rifter]

If you want them to last put a fan on them, if you dont care if they die then leave them. As stated 60C is the max you want them preferably you want to keep them at around 40-45. Mine sit(2 seagtes, one 7200.12 one 7200.11) at 38-40 with 2 120mm fans blowing accross them.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: faxon
i killed 2 seagate IDE drives running them in a setup like that, only i did have case fans and they still overheated and died. my 3 remaining seagate drives are all 7200.10 barracudas and they run nearly twice as hot loaded as my Vraptor does, which is rediculous. the number one thing i have seen to kill drives after a shitty power supply or excessive Gs is definitely heat. i would put some case fans in there, or if your case is just really old get a new one with a 120mm fan blowing air across the HDD mounting area(s)

Definately. I started developing bad sectors on a 30GB DeathStar drive, after letting it get to temps exceeding 55C. (In one of those IDE mobile rack things, no fans.)

 

[jimhsu]

According to google's drive report (http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf), high temperatures are not that much of a concern (but yes 60oC is pretty bad). Conversely, temperatures below 30oC can actually be WORSE for hard drives -- the reasons are inconclusive.