Hard Drives HOT to touch?!

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div0

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Is it ab-normal for hard drives to produce so much heat that they are HOT to touch? Like hot so that you can touch them with your hand, but you wouldn't want to put them up to your face for example ;)

I currently have 4 SATA drives in a Antec SLK3700Amb case - one of which is a Raptor 150, which I "think" is the one producing almost all of the heat.

I just had a problem with XP (after only a couple of months max from the original install) and so I have recently reinstalled XP on the Raptor. As I was going through the diagnosis prosess of trying to find out what was wrong - I noticed that my hard drives appeared to be running hotter than I would have expected. They computer can be on from say 10am-9pm on some days, but maybe 6hrs a day would be more typical.

I dont have a fan at the front of my case (where the HDD's are) - but there is space for one (120mm I think). The drives all sit in a "cage", but the airflow isn't great because of cables and the lack of a front fan.

My main question is do you think that it would be normal for the drives and cage to be (very) hot to the touch, considering my (lack of) cooling arrangements??

There is pleanty of room (and airflow) towards the back of the case and so I'm considering swapping the fan from the back of the case, to right in front of the hard drives. Does this seem sensible?

I would ideally like to add a decent 120mm fan to the setup but I cant justify spending £10 on a fan with another £5 going on postage :(

If I have to I will add a fan from a local computer shop if I have to, but I'm hoping the swapping the current fan position will help!

So are these temps to be expected - or are they a sign of a serious problem?

Cheers for any input.
 
Raptor + no airflow = heat

Seems entirely normal to me. There are several utilities you can get to monitor HD temperatures down load one and you'll see the temperature for each drive.
 
Yeah thanks for the reply - just done an Advance Search of this forum and found a few threads talking about hard drive temps - seems that anything around 40C is quite common and up to 55C or so is quite high.

I would guess that my drives are (were) at the higher end, going on touch.

I'm certain that my case fan would be better used at the front of my case - pulling some air straight over the drives and leaving the fan-slot at the back of the case as a passive "vent". If I need to, I'll add another fan, but I'm quite keen on changing my whole system this year and so I'm not really up for spending money unnessesarily - although I dont want to kill my hard drives as I'll be keeping at least one of them!

Are there any particular programs that are better for monitoring temps than others?
 
They use the S.M.A.R.T. feature of the HD to get the temperature so they are all pretty much equal, a free one can be found here :
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/...nce_and_Repair_Utilities/HDD_Thermometer.html

Remember, with air flow you are looking for balance and 'flow'. Just one fan at the front isn't going to be a great solution, but you'd want it pulling cold air in from outside, not sucking warm air in the case out over the drives.
 
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thanks again, I'll consider trying to pick up another fan.

In the short term - I'll move the fan to the front and make sure it is sucking in cold air from outside.

I'll also check out that link when I get home from work and do a "before and after" test. Hopefully I'll see a decent change :)
 
I installed two lower performing drives in an old case, yes they get warm but no way do they get that hot. Get a fan or too methinks :p
 
Well I've moved the fan from the back of the case to right in front of the hard drives.

The comps been on since I got home from work (5pm ish) - so thats about 3hrs.

During that time its had 2hrs of installing programs and updates, and running spyware and anti virus scans. Followed by an hour of gaming!!

So its had a pretty heavy 3hrs and according to HDD Thermometer the disks are steady at 38-44C.

I take it thats not too bad?
 
Mine have been on all day and are now at 25C and has not gone over 27C

But I'm not running a Raptor and I have a Stacker case which has excellent air flow.

50C would be a warning level so you seem to be safe, but not exactly cool :)
 
div0 said:
Well I've moved the fan from the back of the case to right in front of the hard drives.

The comps been on since I got home from work (5pm ish) - so thats about 3hrs.

During that time its had 2hrs of installing programs and updates, and running spyware and anti virus scans. Followed by an hour of gaming!!

So its had a pretty heavy 3hrs and according to HDD Thermometer the disks are steady at 38-44C.

I take it thats not too bad?
Click to expand...

Compared to mine you are running yours very hot. I bought a CoolerMaster Cooldrive 6, and now my Raptor never gets above 26C :)
 
I have a 120mm fan setup over all 5 drives. TBH, 44C loaded isn't really that hot and pretty much the average for people I would assume. Mine probably load at about 33C on a warm day or in a warm room and about 28C on a cold day/cold room.

HDU's are safe up to 55C but the cooler you keep them, the more you can squeeze out of their lifespan.
 
Teal how many drives do you have in your system?

I reckon if I only had one hard drive, then I could keep it down at 25-35C. The problem is that having 4 drives just natuarally produces more heat!!

My case only takes 5 hard drives and unfortunately my graphics card restricts one of those slots - so the airflow around the hard drives is obviously a LOT worse than if I only had one drive!

I reckon around 40C is about the best I can get with my case at the moment - I could add another fan to the back of the case but I can't see it helping the hard drives that much, although it should help general case temps a bit.
 
Smids obviously hard drive failures can happen at any time - but I totally agree that the cooler you keep them, the longer they "should" last.

Any idea about the sort of time you might "squeeze" out of a drive, by keeping it say 10C cooler?

I know its pretty much a theoretical question - but I wondered if you had any indication as to whether (on average) it would be days/weeks/months/years?!?!?!

Obviously the Raptor was quite expensive and so I'll definately want that to last for my next build, which will occur sometime this year.

But the 2 Seagates are over 2 years old now, and the Maxtor was a cheapo addition - so i'm not expecting too much from them (long term) :)

I might see if I can make do without the Maxtor drive and then I'll only have 3 drives in the system - which should actually improve airflow a LOT!! (just the way the drive bays are layed out)
 
Well cooler air would mean lower pressure and ever so slightly smaller metal parts (we're talking on an atomic level). Also, heat and pressure are the two most degrading things when it comes to any mechanical parts. I should think months is more likely, especially when dropping from something like 45-50C down to 35-40C loaded.
 
Running 2 HD at the moment but with the Stacker the airflow across the drives is excellent.

If your case is cluttered it obviously will not help, but don't underestimate the benefit of balanced airflow, stuffing air into a case without extracting it doesn't create a good airflow it just increases pressure and turbulence which don't aid cooling.

There may be little you can do right now and it may not be worth buying a new fan, but when you do change cases make sure you have a balance between air sucked in and air sucked out, don't rely on passive venting to remove the hot air.
 
I quite agree - I've been looking quite carefully into cooling and noise, with regards to my next setup.

Normally I'd just spend money and improve my existing setup - but as long as I'm not doing any damage to the parts that I want to keep (Seasonic 600W PSU and Raptor 150) then I'll probably save my money until I upgrade the whole system.

Potentially I could buy a new case and fans just now and use that until I buy the new system (mobo, ram, cpu etc) and swap things in then.

But that just means that I'll have to go through the hassle of transferring things from case to case twice in a relatively short period of time.

If 40-45C isn't doing any serious damage then I'll probably just make do for the time being. Its good to know that I can keep an eye on the temps now though - so thanks for that :)

If I see any reasonably priced 120mm fans kicking around in the shops, I might just pick one up.

Cheers for the advice guys :)
 
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