WTF? WD SATA HD reaches 58C on speedfan?

[Techie333]

According to my Speedfan, my Western Digital 160gb SATA 7200rpm is running at 58C??! Can this be right? It is placed right below two intake fans in my case. I have a ASROCK ConroeXfire-eSATA2 mobo w/ Intel Pentium D 805 @ 3Ghz running around 44C on idle. My motherboard temps are around 37 on idle, but my HD is reading 58C right now! WHY?!

EDIT: It's now 60C!!! Is this normal??!?!

 

[Powermoloch]

Dustbunnies?

 

[SunSamurai]

Place the fan blowing oin the drive, not under or over it. I forced one to hide in the grill on my case, hard drives were cooler than anything else in the computer yet in a raid0 right ontop of each other (1/2 inch space)

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: Techie333
My motherboard temps are around 37 on idle, but my HD is reading 58C right now! WHY?!

EDIT: It's now 60C!!! Is this normal??!?!

Normal?!? Yeah, I *guess*...

I've got a pretty nice setup -- not great, but nice -- surely above 'normal'!

Right now, my main board is 25C. My CPU is 36C. And, my striped WD800JDs are sitting at 36C and 39C. I would consider this 'normal' for me! In a more typical 'normal' system, 60C on the HDs wouldn't surprise me. Most likely, your drives will die in a year or so. That's 'normal' too, unfortunately.

If I were you, I'd start imvesting my time in finding a cure!

The problem with HDs is, they're lidded devices with no heat spreaders integrated into them -- and as everyone knows, air is a poor conductor of heat -- so, blowing a little air on them isn't going to do jack squat. You need a hurricane -- either that or spreaders -- or both -- your choice! Otherwise, 'situation normal'...

Assuming you don't have water cooling, Vantec Vortex & iCEBERQ, or Cool Master CoolDrive HD coolers are a good compromise! If you have water works, Koolance HD-50-L06 Hydra-Paks should do the job...

 

[Techie333]

Why does this HD get so hot? Isn't Western Digital at fault here!??!?!

 

[Pens1566]

Originally posted by: Techie333
Why does this HD get so hot? Isn't Western Digital at fault here!??!?!

There have been WD SATA drives with a bad algorithm in their firmware for temps. I had a 2500KS that said it was running @55C while not doing anything, but it was barely warm when I touched it.

Try looking at the temp right as you get in windows. If its not close to ambient room temp, you have a drive that is showing you the wrong temp. Also, is the drive too hot to touch? @58C you shouldn't be able to stand more than a few seconds at most.

 

[dawza]

The problem with HDs is, they're lidded devices with no heat spreaders integrated into them -- and as everyone knows, air is a poor conductor of heat -- so, blowing a little air on them isn't going to do jack squat. You need a hurricane -- either that or spreaders -- or both -- your choice! Otherwise, 'situation normal'...

Define "hurricane." Yes, air is a poor heat conductor. However, flowing air is pretty good at removing heat from surfaces which radiate heat, assuming there is a temperature differential. Metal (which happens to be what the HDD is encased in) is a pretty good heat conductor (relative to air), and therefore will effectively radiate heat into its environment (air).

I have two 92mm fans spinning at ~1000RPM blowing on my soft mounted WD HDD. The drive is standing vertically such that only one (long) side is facing the air directly.

Room temp = 24-25C
Case temp = 35-36C (air middle of the case, measured via probe)
HDD SMART temp = 33C idle, 36C load
HDD case temp = 36C idle, 39C load (measured with probe)

The drive will quickly reach the mid-40s without any airflow. A drop of 8-10C due to <35CFM of airflow is hardly "jack squat." This situation is hardly special- all of my rigs exhibit a similar behavior, and a search of the forums will show this to be the rule.

55C is not "normal." My best guess would be a faulty sensor- take the advice of the previous poster and do a finger test. Anything above 50C will begin to feel painful.

And, even if your drives were running at 55C, that is still within spec for WD. They will not die within a year due to heat-related issues if this really is the case.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: dawza
Define "hurricane."

Hrm... well, this would do nicely ( 80 CFM )...

Whatta ya think?

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: dawza
And, even if your drives were running at 55C, that is still within spec for WD. They will not die within a year due to heat-related issues if this really is the case.

Source

Some may ask the question.. is it really important to keep a hard drive cool? Even myself, I don't usually care about how hot my HDD's get.. as long as they are not outrageously high.

Generally speaking though, when your computer components overheat, they could end up dying on you sooner.

So keeping your HDD cool, could prolong the units life. If you live in a cool environment, you may not need one as much. Personally, if I had hard drives hover around 40ºC all the time, I would considering getting a cooler.

If it's 50ºC+, I would consider it a definite need.

 

[scrawnypaleguy]

My WD hard drive does this too. I've got a 120mm Yate Loon right in front of it (it's suspended to stop vibrations) at 5v and as I sit here doing nothing, it's at 45c. Easily the hottest thing in my computer. I even tried the Zalman hard drive cooler with heatpipes and it made no difference at all. My drive will go upwards of 50c under heavy load, yet it's barely warm to the touch. I think the diodes are off on some of these WDs or something.

 

[avi85]

Originally posted by: scrawnypaleguy
My WD hard drive does this too. I've got a 120mm Yate Loon right in front of it (it's suspended to stop vibrations) at 5v and as I sit here doing nothing, it's at 45c. Easily the hottest thing in my computer. I even tried the Zalman hard drive cooler with heatpipes and it made no difference at all. My drive will go upwards of 50c under heavy load, yet it's barely warm to the touch. I think the diodes are off on some of these WDs or something.

based on your sig you have the wd2500ks which is known to have an incorrectly calibrated thermal sensor (on many of them but not all), just subtract about 20 degrees celsius to get the real temperature

(although if it feels like it's gonna burn your hand them it may actually be that hot )

 

[LOUISSSSS]

My friend has the same problem on the WD caviar 160gb 8mb SATA. idles at 50C. i dunno what the problem is, WD? or is it the centurion 5 case that the hdd is in? is it actually overheating? or is the temperature just wrong? i've seen it hit 60C and WD says to keep it under 50C

 

[ajemm]

My 2500KS is usually at 66c according to Speedfan. Although it doesn't feel all that warm to the touch. My Aria case is notoriously toasty.

 

[SparkyJJO]

My samsung HD is idling at 29*C right now It has a low noise, low CFM fan blowing over it.

I've found that all it takes to cool a HD down is just some moving air. Maxtor drives I've noticed lately run HOT, but all it took to get one down to just a little warm was a low CFM fan blowing a little breeze across it. If you put a fan blowing across the HD that should take care of the higher temps.

BTW the sensor could be out of whack - touch the HD and see how warm it feels. My old s754 Athlon 64 system had a bad thermal sensor on the CPU, it would tell me the CPU was at 65*C at bootup (heatsink stone cold), 65*C at idle (heatsink lukewarm), and 65*C under load (heatsink warm). The arctic silver 5 was applied properly as well, remounts didn't change anything. So a bad thermal sensor isn't unlikely if the drive only feels slightly warm.

 

[Operandi]

Originally posted by: Pens1566

Originally posted by: Techie333
Why does this HD get so hot? Isn't Western Digital at fault here!??!?!

There have been WD SATA drives with a bad algorithm in their firmware for temps. I had a 2500KS that said it was running @55C while not doing anything, but it was barely warm when I touched it.

Try looking at the temp right as you get in windows. If its not close to ambient room temp, you have a drive that is showing you the wrong temp. Also, is the drive too hot to touch? @58C you shouldn't be able to stand more than a few seconds at most.

This is good advice.

I have three (one 160GB Maxtor & two 320GB Western Digitals) 7200RPM drives stacked fairly tightly together with only two 80mm Panaflo L1As @ 5v cooling them.

When the drives are idle they normally run in mid to high 30s.

 

[bigKr33]

Just get some air flowing over those hd's. I used to have some raptors and before they were idling at 50c, then i installed a 120mm in front of my case and the temp hd droped to the mid 30c range.

 

[Griswold]

If that temperature is accurate, your HDD wont last as long as it could if you ignore it. 58°C is definitely too much for extended periods of time.
As mentioned above, try to keep them in the 30's.