harddrive cooling yes/no

TinderBox (UK)

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I am currently in the process of upgrading my MAXTOR 80gb hdd to an

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300gb.

my question is, should i fit an HDD cooler to the bottom of the HDD.

or will it be fine without one installed.

thankyou.




 

NickelPlate

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I went to great lengths and extra expense to build a quiet PC so I don't use them. I've never had a HD fail in less than 5 years, so I attributed their deaths to natural causes.

I would only use one if the manufacturer recommended it or if you're mounting it in a high ambient temperature environment or in such a way that airflow around the HD is restricted.

If you don't care about the noise, and would just feel better about it then go for it.

Regards,

Dave
 

NickelPlate

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TinderBox (UK) said:
well I decided to get an harddrive cooler.

I wonder if i should put some thermal compound between the harddrive and the heatsink.

regards.

That would improve the heat transfer but sounds like it could get messy especially if your PC is in a dusty room and needs to be cleaned regularly like mine. Once I get even a little thermal grease on my hands, it just seems to get all over my clothes and everything I touch no matter how hard I try to wipe it off.


Personally, I'd go with one of the fanless HD heatpipe coolers like this one:

http://www.cemalpcstore.com/product_info.php?cPath=461_469&products_id=30007


Regards,

Dave
 

NickelPlate

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ACMarina said:
I love the noise, I've got like 8 fans running in my case right now..


It never used to bother me either, but then one day it just did. And so started a long and arduous quest to build a quiet, high performance PC. I've only got 3 fans in my PC, all of which are big 120mm fans and spin well below 1000rpm, I can hardly hear them. In fact the loudest components in my PC right now are my hard drives and I've got them mounted on rubber grommets for vibration isolation.

Regards,

Dave
 

IsaacHayes

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My HD is the 2nd quitest thing in my PC. 1st is the PS. It's a WD SATA 80gig 7200rpm. I mean you can not hear it at all when it's accessing. I have one 120mm case fan running on slowest setting on the fanmate2, and a zalman fanless cpu HS with the fan bracket thing, turning at ~1600rpm. Loudest thing would be the vidoe card fan when it spins up.
 

bruddamoke

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You won't need it if you have a tower case and enough space where there are spare bays above and below the HDD you will be installing. More important is the amount of cooling you have in the case, otherwise that HDD cooler will only be circulating hot air around the HDD. Probably better to put a case fan at the front (pulling air into the case) to help airflow. This supposes the fan(s) at the rear pull air out...I've seen cases with the rear fans oriented in the opposite way. Put a filter over the intake case fan to keep dust down, in such a way as to be easily replaceable.
 

TinderBox (UK)

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I have a tower case, but it has an LCD temp display where the front fan would normaly go.

I have 80mm fan pull air out of the back of the case, but theirs none going in.

at least the HDD cooler would be pulling air into the case from the front.

thanks for the help.
 

cratz2

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Those types of devices work pretty well, but they are most needed when a case with 4 drive bays has 4 drives installed... that is, when each drive has another drive right on top of it.

I don't know about that one, but back when I ran 15,000rpm SCSI drives, I had three HDD coolers that each had a blue heatsink for the top of the drive and three small fans in front, pulling in cool air. They weren't really very loud.

Ironically, my personal computer is VERY quiet... the loudest thing in it is the CD rom drive right when you put a disc in but the computer I'm typing this on is ridiculously loud.

Just be sure to clean those fans occasionally.
 

eluminator

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Cooler is better. This drive cooler is probably not a bad idea.

I am one of the noise-o-phobes that make's their computers as quiet as possible. I haven't used coolers with fans, but they could probably be made reasonably quiet.

I mount my drives in 5¼ slots and hope there is enough air drifting by to cool them. I have used passive heatsinks on drives, but I really don't know how much good they do. Maybe just peeling off the sticker from the top would do more. I have one drive mounted with a heatpipe cooler now, but I haven't gotten around to putting any on my other drives.

I do monitor the temperature of the drives. These 7200 RPM drives get cooler every year. The ones I have now seem to run around 115ºF and I don't think they get much over 120ºF when defragging. I really should check one of these days.

All drives report their temperature these days, but some lie like hell. I point my IR thermometer at the front of them occasionally, and that seems to give me a fairly reliable temperature measurement.

We noise-o-phobes like to start with things that generate as little heat as possible. It makes them easier to cool. I for one, wouldn't buy a Maxtor because they generate a little more heat than most, and also because their quality control on the 8/9 series was terrible.

My next one will probably be a Western Digital, although my Samsung Spinpoints are doing well, and I see Seagate's new ones have some good specs.

You might want to check out storagereview.com.
 

Mr_Light

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I have quite a few drives in external USB2 cases, both with fans and without. I must say I am really suprised in the different heat output from different drives. I have Seagate and Maxtor drives and the Maxtor drives seem to run MUCH hotter. Even my latest 300GB Maxtor drive runs very hot!
 

eluminator

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I could tell stories about my Maxtor drives. But on the subject of external ones, I once foolishly shelled out a lot of money for my first external. It was a Maxtor that had USB and Firewire. I had a mobo with firewire and had nothing to plug into it so I paid an extra $100 for the firewire.

The firewire worked perfectly from the start and I'm rather glad I got it. But the Maxtor didn't have a fan. Not only that, but it was almost hermetically sealed with some kind of rubber gasket (maybe silicone) that was used to support the drive. Great shock isolation, but also great thermal insulation.

For a quick backup, it was okay, but when I ran it for an hour, it got hot enough to fry eggs, and corruupted all the data.

The point is, you can't trust even a hard drive manufacturer to build an external drive (or even an internal) that makes sense.

The hard drive business is a cutthroat business, profit margins are thin, and there is enormous competition for our business. We consumers are the winners, but I think there will be a lot less manufacturers in the future. To stay in business, every manufacturer has to come out with a better one, and quickly, lest their competitors do, and put them out of business. And they have to be lucky in their decisions. Apparently Maxtor made some unlucky guesses and are hurting. I've read that Seagate is making plans to attempt a purchase of Maxtor.
 

Donovan

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Unless you have multiple drives in a poorly ventilated case you shouldn't need fancy hdd coolers. Now it is true that excess heat is very bad for hard drives and the cooler they run the better...

A good example of heat related drive failures are those little small form factor dell desktops (SFF GX150/260/270/280 etc). We have had to replace a majority of hard drives in these due to overheating. The SFF provide no airflow whatsoever for the hdd (the drives are sandwiched between the cd/dvd drives on the top and the cables below) so they run hot and consequently they fail often.

Heat is not the enemy of just the hard drives; it causes stress to all the components. I would recommend you improve the cooling of your entire case instead of just drive coolers. Moving the drive so it is not sandwiched up against something, adding fans, reroute the cables to provide better airflow are some of the things you can do. It may be better option just to go with a new case. Good quality cases can provide excellent cooling without a lot of noise.
 

bruddamoke

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Donovan said:
Heat is not the enemy of just the hard drives; it causes stress to all the components. I would recommend you improve the cooling of your entire case instead of just drive coolers. Moving the drive so it is not sandwiched up against something, adding fans, reroute the cables to provide better airflow are some of the things you can do. It may be better option just to go with a new case. Good quality cases can provide excellent cooling without a lot of noise.

I concur with all of these suggestions, will probably help the longevity of all the other components in the case.

If you still have flat ribbon IDE cables, replace them with rounded cables. Zip-tie wires from the power supply together and move them out of the way if possible, or sleeve them if you are so inclined. There are other ways to tweak cooling/airflow, like cutting out and replacing stock grills protecting exhaust fans, and/or replacing fans with higher performing ones.

Whoops, better slow down, before the Geek Squad tries to enlist me. BTW, I'm fanatical about cooling (can you tell) and I've never had a hard drive fail on me yet. Hope this will not jinx me. I've killed a couple of optical drives by sheer usage though.
 

bruddamoke

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TinderBox (UK) said:
the MAXTOR 300gb im`m getting is an SATA.

so the cable very thin, I think it`s about time that DVD-ROM and DVD-RW drive started using sata.

I sa this on e-bay, its not about cooling but i thought it was interesting.

http://www.elstonsystems.com/prod/hard_drive_recovery_card.html

what do you think.

regards.
Awesome, I love the SATA drives, have one in my main home computer, 250gb I think. Two thin cables, so much easier to route. I doubt that current optical drives will see a market in moving from IDE since transfer rate is more than sufficient, but when the higher density drives (BluRay, HD-DVD, etc.) hits the market, they may consider it.

Will have to look at that item on ebay, not familiar with it. I've not needed something like that yet, fortunately. I'll provide my thoughts later today.
 

Donovan

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TinderBox (UK) said:
the MAXTOR 300gb im`m getting is an SATA.

so the cable very thin, I think it`s about time that DVD-ROM and DVD-RW drive started using sata.

I sa this on e-bay, its not about cooling but i thought it was interesting.

http://www.elstonsystems.com/prod/hard_drive_recovery_card.html

what do you think.

regards.
Like others have stated, I would be inclined to recommend something else besides Maxtor. I used to be a big Maxtor fan but I have had a number of maxtor drives fail recently. The quality has gone down as well as the warranty. You can get 3 year warranty on a bare OEM drive but only one year on a boxed retail version, that makes no sense! I would recommend Seagate (5 year warranty!!!) or Samsung. I have had no issues with either of those...
 

eluminator

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TinderBox (UK) said:
I think it`s about time that DVD-ROM and DVD-RW drive started using sata.
I.

I find it strange that most optical drives are still IDE. I assume the push for SATA was helped by the big integraters like HP and Dell. Well it worked, but now they have to use mobos with SATA and IDE. It makes no sense to me.

I'm assuming they still use IDE optical drives in their new computers just because the SATA optical drives I see on the market are rare and expensive. Some day IDE has got to go. What's taking so long?
 

TinderBox (UK)

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well i got my 1st SATA harddrive and my HDD cooler, as i described in post 4.

my room is at 20c

my previous 80gb maxtor was running as between 43-47c according to the built in sensor.

this new maxtor 300gb, with the HDD cooler is running all night at 29c thats quite a drop.

I used thermal compound between the HDD and the cooler heatsink, and the cooler fans are very quite.

I am very happy.:)

regards.
 
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