Hard drives overheating

JonJ678 · 8 May 2009 at 16:23

Hey. What I have in mind is 6 hard drives stacked on top of each other. A fairly thick aluminium box around these, so 3 sides of each drive are in physical contact with the aluminium case.
Heat can flow from drives into case, which will be radiated rather slowly into the room. Any ideas on whether the drives will cope with having no airflow whatsoever?

This would mean no acoustic damping at all, anything between hard drives and case would only hinder heat transfer. So vibrations might be an issue.
I guess the question is can you use a hard drive with airflow around it?

CaseyChaos · 8 May 2009 at 16:42

Are you meaning you'll put these in an aluminium pc case or a little case like a drive caddy?

miniyazz · 8 May 2009 at 17:28

I would expect them to overheat quickly. But hey, what's the worst that can happen: you see the temps go up too much, scrap the idea. May as well give it a go if it's not gonna cost you anything.

Rroff · 8 May 2009 at 18:07

Aslong as there is a 1+cm gap between the drives it shouldn't be an issue.

I've seen way too many entire RAID arrays fail in my time from people cramming 3+ drives in almost or even touching each other resulting in them getting v. warm.

JonJ678 · 9 May 2009 at 04:46

CaseyChaos said:
Are you meaning you'll put these in an aluminium pc case or a little case like a drive caddy?

About halfway between. Mini itx board, pci raid card and half a dozen or so hard drives in a box.
Cheers for the responses guys, going to go with air cooling rather than passive. A little noise for lots of peace of mind is a fair exchange.