Monitor Hard Drive Temperatures

Greenlizard0 · 25 Jul 2007 at 22:03

What's the best and most reliable software for this. I just had a scare a minute ago with something telling me that my storage drive shot up to 120 degrees Celsius

edit - it seems to hover at around 52 degrees and anything I install starts beeping at me...Gargh!!

jbloggs · 25 Jul 2007 at 22:17

I don't know if there is any one that is specifically the best, but have a look at:

HDTune

HDD Health v2.0

HD Health v2.1

Or some of the ordinary Syetem Information utilities like, Everest Home, Belarc, PC Wizard etc.

rpstewart · 25 Jul 2007 at 23:06

Speedfan is another option (although like most things it can't read drives in RAID arrays) and it will monitor all the other system temperature sensors too,

Greenlizard0 · 26 Jul 2007 at 00:13

rpstewart said:
Speedfan is another option (although like most things it can't read drives in RAID arrays) and it will monitor all the other system temperature sensors too,

I've just had a second crash and heard a few very loud clicks on startup. The drive appears and is accessible through windows like normal.

I have three drives in total sitting fairly close to each other - two raptors in RAID 0, and a storage drive. The raptors are less than a month old.

When I run HD Tune right after windows has booted up it tells me my storage drive is running at 120 degrees. A few minutes later it stabilises around 51 degrees.

My drive is a WD 250GB KS SATA II drive just over a year old. It doesn't physically feel too hot or anything like that. Is something seriously wrong? What else can I do to check?

jbloggs · 26 Jul 2007 at 00:55

The WD 250 KS is stated to be running at a "normal operating" temp up to 60C, so 51C is still within the acceptable operating temp, although personally, I like to see my HDDs temp at around 40C.

Run the manufacturer's diagnostic utility (see Here) on it to see what that throws up.

Greenlizard0 · 26 Jul 2007 at 00:58

That's what I thought too, not sure why since it generally is stable around 50-54 degrees until now. It's the clicks that have me worried though

Greenlizard0 · 26 Jul 2007 at 16:07

Hmm...it's stabalised around 40 degrees now, 10 less than usual. I left the case open last night and turned my room fan towards the hard drives. Extreme measures lol but it seems to have done the trick!

waso_dude · 26 Jul 2007 at 17:52

Get a nice 120mm fan on them

my 2xwestern digital 320gb Raid edition drives (hotter than normal HDDs) and my 320gb 7200.10. seem to sit at 33oC in my p180 with a single fan on them.

Greenlizard0 · 27 Jul 2007 at 19:18

waso_dude said:
Get a nice 120mm fan on them

my 2xwestern digital 320gb Raid edition drives (hotter than normal HDDs) and my 320gb 7200.10. seem to sit at 33oC in my p180 with a single fan on them.

I may have to shuffle my hard drives around a bit. I bought a zalman cooler for my storage drive. And I think I'm going to seperate my Raptors (they're in RAID 0) to give each of them a bit of a gap.

I do have two case fans in atm, I may reshuffle those too....hmmm...

Greenlizard0 · 27 Jul 2007 at 23:38

Argh - it's just done it again!! I boot up hear a few weird clicks and HD tune tells me my storage drive is at over 250 degrees, a few seconds later it's back to 42?!? :confused:

Atom · 28 Jul 2007 at 06:23

I use DTemp.

Great little program.

Greenlizard0 · 31 Jul 2007 at 10:58

Great, it doesn't boot up properly anymore. I left the machine off last night and now whenever the drive boots up it just clicks at me. Win XP's disc management just tells me that the drive is unbootable or something :/

helmutcheese · 31 Jul 2007 at 13:46

Speedfan will tell you the temps of a Raid set up, it is just one of the drives though prob SATA1 port but its a guide, it cant run the Diagnostic in the SMART tab.

ByteJuggler · 31 Jul 2007 at 14:56

Greenlizard0 said:
Great, it doesn't boot up properly anymore. I left the machine off last night and now whenever the drive boots up it just clicks at me. Win XP's disc management just tells me that the drive is unbootable or something :/

It's dead Jim. RMA time.

Personally I keep my drives under 40C (ideally lower than 35C.) I've not had a drive failure in 10 years (touch wood.) I attribute this in large part to keeping my drives well under their max operating temperatures.

Greenlizard0 · 1 Aug 2007 at 12:13

helmutcheese said:
Speedfan will tell you the temps of a Raid set up, it is just one of the drives though prob SATA1 port but its a guide, it cant run the Diagnostic in the SMART tab.

It doesn't seem to be able to tell me the temp of my RAID 0 array. Is there any freeware out there that can tell me this please (2 disks)?

helmutcheese · 1 Aug 2007 at 17:39

Hmm, it tells me the temp of my Raptors, obv its prob reading only 1 of them but hey its a guide

, have you got Smart in the bios turned on ? (not sure if needed)