Heat
- Thread starter JoeBoi
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ooo first i've heard of that my maxtors have been running 50 - 60c for 3- 4 years now
Well unless they go much higher than that it should be alright! They will have a shorter life than disks that stay under 40.
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Maxtor state 55C as MAX, should be cool if fitted at front of case with intake fan blowing over it/them.
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I'm not sure it is quite so conclusively simple as that, Google published the results of their experiences with hard drives (BBC article) and they come to the conclusion that hard drives with infrequent use and low temperatures are more likely to fail than drives with heavier use and warmer temperatures. However it does conclude that very high temperatures are likely to cause more failures. I personally would let a drive get up to about 60C before I really started to worry.
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I'm not sure it is quite so conclusively simple as that, Google published the results of their experiences with hard drives (BBC article) and they come to the conclusion that hard drives with infrequent use and low temperatures are more likely to fail than drives with heavier use and warmer temperatures. However it does conclude that very high temperatures are likely to cause more failures. I personally would let a drive get up to about 60C before I really started to worry.
Actually that is somewhat of a misrepresentation/oversimplification of what they reported. Google's definition of "hot" is anything above (only!) 45C, and for drives in this temperature category over 3 years, mortality rate is still significantly increased. I don't know why people interpret their results so simplistically. In addition, it's much safer, by google's own data to run drives (at 3+ years) cooler (where they have the lowest mortality rate) than hotter (40C+). The only segment where mortality rates were significantly lower when "hot" (45C+) than when "cold" 15C-30C was for brand new drives (less than 3 months, which I put down to the "run in" effect.) As soon as drives get out of that age bracket, the safest temperature from google's reports are 35C-45C (e.g. moderately warm, hardly hot) and when it reaches 3+ years, in effect 15C - 40C is safest (and even 40C-45C becomes slightly more risky than below 40C!) For a slightly more belabored comment in this vein, see this thread.
There's this meme doing the rounds that Google's article says you can run your drives "hot." It's not that simple. Like I've said before, manufacturers state a maximum operational temperature for their hard drives. There's a reason for that.
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True it was an oversimplification although not necessarily totally incorrect for all that, I didn't feel like getting into all the whys and wherefores in detail, happily you have now done that for me. My final line wasn't trying to imply that running a drive hot was a good idea, I was just pointing out what I would consider acceptable and indeed what I have previously done with no apparant ill-effects to the drives in question*.
*nb this is relying on the drive temperature monitors so perhaps not the most accurate method of measuring if they are anything like motherboard or CPU sensors.
*nb this is relying on the drive temperature monitors so perhaps not the most accurate method of measuring if they are anything like motherboard or CPU sensors.