i have two sata HD on my system now, 80 +80 gig maxtor, so total 160 gig, the only problem here is this drive getting worse in temperature.... sometimes may reach to 70 degrees.....heh! it is too hot, right??? :D so i'm a lilttle bit scared, someday it may come failure to be accessed or curropt.... :( well, i have read that the too hot temperature can contributed to HD failure....so maybe someone here may give me the right and ideal temperature for HD in a system. :rolleyes: :cool:

If that's 70 C, then your system and/or HD's definitely needs better cooling.
The normal operating temp for a HD is 35-40 C.

mine operates at 40C, and that is pretty cool

I have intake fans going over my HDD's, so they get the coolest air first. I'm planning on adding a side fan to my computer for my core components. But in any case, that keep my HDD's at a nice cool temp. :D Probably well under 35C but I haven't measured it yet.

I agree that 70C is too high, but over 40C is still OK. I would say that I would get worried if the HDD temp gets up to 55C or more. Hard drives are a lot more resilient than you might think!

so it seem like mine get too worst in temperature...so it is time for the new cooling...:p

I concur that 70'C is too hot.
My drive in my media-player box runs all day long, and sits around 40-42'C, sometimes up to 46'C or so when it has been playing movies for hours on end.

This is with an ambient room temperature of around 27'C

Question for other gurus reading this:

- I thought that any drive with SMART, would alert you to excessive HDD temperature?


MM.

I thought that any drive with SMART, would alert you to excessive HDD temperature?Nope. We tackled this one awhile back. SMART is pretty feature-less for a system that supposed to keep an eye on your hard drives. :rolleyes: But I suppose it's better than nothing. SMART will alert you to HDD fluctuations in terms of reporting to the BIOS - like intermittent connections or signal time-outs. But it won't actively monitor the status of your hard drive - like temps or voltage/current health.

But still, SMART is better than nothing. Although I can't actually say that it's ever saved a hard drive that I've seen.

Really?!
:eek:

Thanks Saph, that's another bit of info for my brain.

Everest, which can access and read the SMART "Features" of the drive, tell me that the maximum temp of the media-player's HDD was at one point 49'C.

Seagate themselves say that you should not let the drive get hotter then 50'C, so it was probably in the orange, approaching the red at some point...
:p

I've already got one cooling-fan blowing on the HDD, but it must still be getting a little hot.

Also, is there any way to find out the operating temperature of an external HDD in a USB2 enclosure???

No monitor program will tell me this info.

In theroy, in order for the internal HDD to tell the sensor chip about it's heat, it must send that temperature data via the IDE cable, so how come the external ones don't appear to be able/willing to report this data via the USB interface?

As this is to do with amysiko's original question about external drives, I ask it here.


MM.

HDD health is a great application which will monitor hard drives' temperatures. Drive needs to have SMARTs but most modern drives have that. Load HDD Health at startup and it sits in the background. Will inform you if critical temp threshold (which you can set) is exceeded. Provides a whole lot of other useful info, plus a prediction of HDD health based on its log of your drive's behaviour. Freeware from http://www.panterasoft.com/ I've been using it for a number of years and its a reall spiffy utility.

WELCOME TO THE PC GUIDE!

Thanks for the link - checking it out now.
:)


MM.

ADDITIONAL: Installed the program - nice little utility - nicer then HDD temp.
:)

saphalline, u said u r going to add another fan but i am thinking of not putting back the intake fan that directs air to the hdd first while cleaning my comp. this is bcoz i thought by not having the fan will definately reduce the dust. it gets dusty pretty quick with those fans on sucking air in.
On second thought, maybe i should just put back the fan.

"Also, is there any way to find out the operating temperature of an external HDD in a USB2 enclosure???"
USB does not support SMART data.
You can get a sensor, but a decent cooler or actively cooled external case is , in my opinion a better investment.

My HD maxes at 30C/85F. I use a full 5.25" bay cooler.
MASSCOOL SYTRIN Kuformula SHF1 Ultra HDD Cooler.
The fans can be a little loud, but it does reduce noise of the actual HD running to about nothing. It also has a very large aluminum heatsink on top, included with a thermal pad for mounting, it is a tight fit in some cases. The pros of the heatsink are that even if both of the two fans fail , you still have decent passive cooling on the drive. I may test it with the fans off to see how well the heatsink works. In my case i only have 1 rear 80MM fan , but it stays under 100F case temp.
Fan Size 40 x 40 x 20mm
RPM 4500 RPM
Noise Level 21 dBA
Newegg has it in stock, they are great about $25 each, i use them for all my HDs now. I had one running at 65C in a crappy external enclosure!

Google wrote a nice paper on HD failure. Surprisingly, temperature isn't as big of a factor as most people thought it would be.
http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

@ davex: Google wrote a nice paper on HD failure. Surprisingly, temperature isn't as big of a factor as most people thought it would be.
http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

you all should read these google papers! I bed you didn't!
Google tested a whole lot of HDD's but all in airconditioned strorage centers, or farms the call it. So Tis complete test is not influenced by the outside air temperature! the tested Hard Drives did never get warm or hot due to the airco. Allso the test does not include temperatures above 51 degrees Celcius also these 51 C Google calls this extremely warm drives..
And the in the end Google concludes : temperature is not an issue for Hard Drive failure!! ... How can they do that Their drives didn't get hotter the 51C
What about your computer HDD's on a warm day doing a virusscan for 2 hours ..resulting in a temperature rise of 10 to 15 dregrees C ..above the standard 45 degrees ...result 60 degrees C and I can tell you this kills your drive! forget the aiconditioned Tests of Google the don't fit the reality.

got to ask ya.....2 x 80gigs? How old are these HDD's? Heat might be an indication that they are going to fail.........you might want to check that out if they are older that 3 years.........make a backup..

3 years?
Considering this thread is revived from 4+ years ago, it's not so 'hot' off the showroom floor anymore... ;)