What temperature range does your HDD operate at?

[NANOTEC]

Mine operates from 47-52 Celcius during idle.

 

[Sc4freak]

That seems a little high unless its a 10,000RPM drive or faster, my Western Digital 200gb 7200RPM does a few degrees under that during load. Then again, I have a 120mm front intake fan blowing right over and under it, so my results might be completely invalid.

 

[nutball]

Mine is very stable, sits at 34±1°C regardless of load. It's a 150GB Raptor. The 160GB Samsung next to it rarely exceeds 20°C (it's not my primary drive though).

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Mine operates from 47-52 Celcius during idle.

I'd say that's high for idle. I'd guess there's not enough cooling there. I'd expect about 35-40 degrees for today's drives when idling.

I did have a recent experience building a PC for a friend who insisted on using three drives he already had. All three of them filled the 3 1/2 drive bays at the bottom of the case, and proceeded to get pretty hot. They were so close together that even though there was lots of ventilation, the drives were effectively closing off the airflow from the front and so the rest of the system was happily running cool because it was pulling more air in from the side vents. The low pressure cause by the case and PSU fan was only being relived from the side, instead of pulling more air from the front. This was really only cured by putting a fan in the front of the case to ensure air was pulled into the front of the case, and over the drives, which dropped their temperatures by nearly 20 degrees.

You also have to remember that some cases put their front intakes at the bottom of the case. If the case has small feet and sits on a carpet, chances are you'll block off that front vent, making life hot for your hard drives.

An alternative option might be to get a conversion kit and mount a drive in a 5 1/4 bay so keeping it away from other hot drives and ideally in a place with better airflow.

 

[NANOTEC]

Yeah my SFF case is very tight. The HDD fits right under the DVD drive with only about 3mm between them and the PS fits right behind that. I also have the case placed on top of a flat surge/power station which also gets warm by itself. My HDD is a bog standard 7200 Seagate. There are no extra fans other than the PS and CPU fans.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Yeah my SFF case is very tight. The HDD fits right under the DVD drive with only about 3mm between them and the PS fits right behind that. I also have the case placed on top of a flat surge/power station which also gets warm by itself. My HDD is a bog standard 7200 Seagate. There are no extra fans other than the PS and CPU fans.

Seagates run pretty cool, so you're not going to get a whole lot better. You might want to definately take the PC off anything warm that will heat it up. Short of some case modifications/replacement, you might look at your PSU and see if it's one that pulls air out of the top/sides, as well as just the bottom where the fan is.

You can look at all kinds of temporary help, like turning your drives off early, CPU power saving mode, etc. While this helps when the PC is idle, as soon as you start to use it things will heat up again, so I prefer to consider options that cool things down even while the system is working hard. This is especially important if you are seeing any heat-related stability issues.

 

[Simon F]

Mine is very stable, sits at 34±1°C regardless of load. It's a 150GB Raptor. The 160GB Samsung next to it rarely exceeds 20°C (it's not my primary drive though).

Assuming the monitoring program is correct, the Maxtor, which replaced the Maxtor that died whilst under warranty (see an earlier thread), still sits at about 50 when in my work PC. I think that might be a warning....

Mind you, it is in a caddy but the lid and base are off so the air circulation shouldn't be that bad.

 

[Bludd]

All my drives are around 35-43 celsius.

HDD Thermometer