hot hard drive = dying hard drive?

Mr Mister · 10 May 2006 at 19:40

Ive got 4 hard drives in my system, in the front of a lian li pc65 with the 2 80mm fans blowing across them at medium fan speed. 3 drives are around 35C mark yet one is at 42C and it isnt being worked at all as it has no data on it. Is this a sign of it dying? Whats the best program to test for bad sectors etc? Its a Western Digital HDD btw.

ChrisLX200 · 11 May 2006 at 07:44

42deg is OK, just spinning the platters and powering the controller PCB generates the heat. You could try swapping positions with one of the other drives to see if the temperatures equalise. You got to keep the drives below 50deg if you can - that's not a fatal temperature but it's the upper limit for a long working life.

aardvark · 11 May 2006 at 19:25

yeah as far as know in all the hard drive diagnostic programs i've used in the last couple of weeks (damn hard drives) the alarms are all set at about 50 degrees, and i have one drive that is hotter than the other.

hp7909 · 11 May 2006 at 19:29

Mr Mister said:
Ive got 4 hard drives in my system, in the front of a lian li pc65 with the 2 80mm fans blowing across them at medium fan speed. 3 drives are around 35C mark yet one is at 42C and it isnt being worked at all as it has no data on it. Is this a sign of it dying? Whats the best program to test for bad sectors etc? Its a Western Digital HDD btw.

Don't know about bad sectors (though maybe 'chkdsk /r'), but you can check/test the drives fitness using SpeedFan 4.28

GeezerButler · 12 May 2006 at 22:44

I have replaced a lot of Maxtor disks in small-case Dell desktops which have no airflow over the drives. Same drives in larger cases have fewer failures so the failures may be heat related - certainly the drives in the small cases get so hot that you can't pick them up until they have cooled off a bit!

ChrisLX200 · 15 May 2006 at 08:20

When they get hot the lube in the bearings gets thin and doesn't do it's job as well, then stuff wears out quicker.

Mr Mister · 16 May 2006 at 13:11

ok thanks for the replies guys, i did the smart test in speedfan and the hottest one is 98% Fitness, so no problems there. I suppose 42C is not that hot anyway for a hdd.