Harddisk operating temperatures

TwoShedsJackson

In the pc i just put together i have a Samsung spinpoint hard disk whose temperature stays steady around 40c, plus a maxtor drive i took from my old dell pc, which runs at anywhere between 50 and 58c even though it is idle most of the time as its just used for archiving etc.

According to the maxtor site, 60c is the maximum operating temp, so should i be looking at getting a cooler for the maxtor or would it be generally likely to run ok that close to the max? I never had any problems with it in the couple of years since i bought the dell pc.

hopeful

I was checking this the other day myself.

Most manufacturers reckon the disks are OK up to 55 0r 60c. Other forums I've checked say high 30's are dangerous.
I personally never let mine go above 30.

My misses cooked my video server disc my moving the tumble dryer next to it. The disk caddy alarm went off at 50c and when I chevked the SMART info for the disk it said the peak temp had been 66c ! This disk a slow death over a few days. Still spin but gives contunous sector errors.

Anyone need a borked 80gigger or one secondhand wife? no warrenty on wife thou

youcancallmeal

I have a 250g spinpoint along with a raptor and a 250g seagate. Of all three the spinpoint is the one that runs consistently hottest. Just looking at it now and its at 30c while the other two are around 25c. What case have you got because airflow will will be the major factor in cooling hard drives.

SouperComputer

as a rule of thumb, you want to keep temps below 39Deg, the possiblility for failure increases expoentially after that.

Matt Simis

My SCSI drives ran at 80C+, hot enough to cause a nasty skin burn. I put some cheap and cheerful 5.25" Bay HDD fans from Maplin on them, about 40c now which is some improvement.

SCSI drives of course at in a heatjacket and rated for much higher temps.



Matt

cockmynut

Below 40 is best. My old computer's hdd used to run at over 50. :eek:

tonyboy247

dont worry about it ...get a fire extinguisher to be safe. if you change dells orrigional spec you are in deep water ..if an internal hd is running to hot it will cause probs within a few minutes, so if its ok now dont worry about it.

SouperComputer

tonyboy247 wrote:

dont worry about it ...get a fire extinguisher to be safe. if you change dells orrigional spec you are in deep water ..if an internal hd is running to hot it will cause probs within a few minutes, so if its ok now dont worry about it.

I dont think the OP is worried about fire! Its reliablity that is the concern.

That said, ive seen uncooled SCSI drives melt their racks!

TempestSabre

I'd had data corruption on drives that were too hot.

unkel

TempestSabre wrote:

I'd had data corruption on drives that were too hot.

So have I - not nice. I've always a case intake fan blowing directly onto the hard drives these days