External possibly over-heating

Craig321 · 28 Jul 2006 at 13:16

Hi,

Over these couple of hot days (33 c+) my external has been ftdisking and disconnecting itself and re-connecting all the time.

Each time it has started doing this I have felt the external and it seems a bit too hot.

The drive never ftdisks in the winter or on cooler days (today it hasn't done it once and it's been cool).

Anyway, I just wondered if it's safe to carefully open it up and clean it out. I've had it for about 2 years now and haven't cleaned it out so it might be overheating because of the hot days & dust.

Thanks,
Craig.

Priapus · 28 Jul 2006 at 17:41

As long as you're careful, and don't bump it too much, I don't see a problem with that.
To cure your problem, why don't you let a small fan blow over it. Like a one of those small desk fans?

Craig321 · 29 Jul 2006 at 23:14

I could do, but really need a no-money solution as I really don't have any money at all at the moment

I could get a £1 sport relief fan

If I opened it up wouldn't it be like opening an internal hard drive and i'd see all the shiny CD thingys inside? Or would they all still be covered when I take the casing off?

Thanks,
Craig.

Messiah Khan · 30 Jul 2006 at 00:29

You will just find a normal harddrive inside, so there are no problems opening it up.

Craig321 · 30 Jul 2006 at 01:18

messiah khan said:
You will just find a normal harddrive inside, so there are no problems opening it up.

Ah, ok. Cool

Weird how externals don't have fans on them yet they have a normal HDD inside >.<

Messiah Khan · 30 Jul 2006 at 10:13

They normally rely on the external enclosure to act as a giant heatsink.

Sparky191 · 30 Jul 2006 at 23:54

They are not designed to be used as much as regular drives. IMO. I've had problems with newer hotter drives in them.

Craig321 · 2 Aug 2006 at 02:28

Sparky191 said:
They are not designed to be used as much as regular drives. IMO. I've had problems with newer hotter drives in them.

Hmm, maybe it's being used a bit too much? I've got 'My Documents' on there instead of my C: driver, maybe that's making it over-work itself? I'll see about moving My Documents to my C: drive instead (it's on my external because I used to have a 40GB hard drive so it saved a lot of space sticking my documents on my external 200gb instead of on my main drive, but now i have an internal 200gb so I'll move it back some time).

Thanks,
Craig.

Craig321 · 9 Aug 2006 at 22:09

Seems to be fixed now. I've put My Documents back on my C: drive and the external is now almost cold to the touch & hasn't ftdisked since.

Must have been due to just about continuous use: Music, pictures, saving stuff to my documents, reading stuff from my documents all the time etc.

Thanks,
Craig.

Sparky191 · 9 Aug 2006 at 22:24

Probably.