I downloaded DTemp it’ll show info about both my hard drives, but only the temperature of the primary hard drive. How can I get it to show temperatures of both?
I just bought a drive today and put it in. I’m running it as my second hard drive. The original drive and the new one were running fine for about 6 hours until my system shut itself down. I opened up the case and realized that both drives had overheated. So I did some rearranging and spaced out the drives a bit more and it seems fine. I’m a little scared though. They new drive is running at 41 C right now.
My question is: WHAT IS AN IDEAL SHUTDOWN TEMP FOR MY DRIVE. It’s a 320 GB WD.
Well I wish I had bothered to search let alone find this article like a year ago. My old case didn’t have room in front for hd fans and now their making a high pitch noise. With speedfan it shows my hard drives were like running at 39-42C. Worst part is they just passed the 1 year warranty mark. Well they haven’t died yet but with my new case if anyone ever wants a good case antec 900 is a very good sturdy case (comes with 2 120mm fans at front to cool the hd’s. With new case cpu is down to 27-29C, hd’s are down to 24-27C, this is using the lowest fan speed of 1200rpm.
If anyone wants a good program speedfan shows all temperatures, and if you click on the S.M.A.R.T tab and choose the hard drive you can perform an in depth online analysis which will show you the average temp min/max temp for that particular hard drive. I repost when I have my new hard drives (will have 1 80gig, 2 160, and 1 40gig) with 800rpm fans installed. Getting 800rpm for the 8dba noise level so lower speed but I’ll tell you what the hd temps.
PC users are a broad range of people and it’s nice to see an article like this. The title, “Hard Drive Temperatures: Be Afraid” is VERY apt. Something is needed to counter the tendency to not think about what’s inside the black box; engineers excepted.
A cupola points:
I believe that temperature cycling, power cycling and humidity will also impact drive longevity. STASIS.
A PC thermostatic fan is great if installed thoughtfully. They often have higher MTbF and are quieter too.
MTBF can be a useful measure. As with a one or two things, it’s when dishonesty skews the dataset that we lose meaning. I’m pretty sure too that we’d be suffering from the odd misinterpretation of statistics.
On the subject of whether heat output is strictly limited by energy input, in general it depends on type of machine (‘machine’ in the physics sense) and the materials from which it is constructed. However it is usually the case that heat output is = electrical input power and I would expect this to be so for hard drives. As very probably an entirely ‘classical’ machine, albeit with sophisticated materials and control, in a hard drive I would wild guess 30% efficiency in the conversion of electrical energy to platter rotation and head positioning. 10W in, 7W out as heat.
How to get a readout of the temperature of RAID array drives? If you have room for a non-raid hard drive in the same cooling space, you can get a fair indication. This won’t catch a calamity with any one drive but that’s not really the idea, is it?
Some, sadly uncommon, software does retrieve drive temperature info from particular RAID chipsets.
Almost last, NOISE. Sorry to cause affront to worshippers of 24/7, full-surround noise pollution but I’m in love with quiet. I’ll gladly trade those extra 5 years of hard drive life for a silent PC.
I don’t think anybody mentioned HDD Thermometer, the software, of course.
good info. i recently got a FREE 80gb drive from a friend at work after they bought a computer which is a nice upgrade for me as i only had a 10gb before. anyway after reading this i checked the temp and my drive was running REALLY hot about 60c and i installed a cheap fan and while my machine is a LOT louder, my hdd is normally about 37c which im happy with! thanks for all the info and help
My oldest drive would run at 45c and beyond. The drive would fail non-critically by retrying, slowing things down (I could tell by examining the SMART logs). I finally got around to replacing it with a drive that was 4 times the capacity (you can’t buy smaller drives new these days). The new drive is faster and my computer is more responsive. In the same location as the old one, the new drive is running 38c under load and 37c normally. I’ve been watching it for the last two days.
Pay attention to the drives, they’ll show signs of age. It’s worth updating to newer, faster, cooler, more efficient technology from time to time. Thank you all for your comments, I found them very helpful.
My mini-SAN device just hangs regularly lately, I wonder if HDD temperature has something to do with it:
hddtemp /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf
/dev/sdb: WDC WD4000YR-01PLB0: 46C
/dev/sdc: WDC WD4000YR-01PLB0: 50C
/dev/sdd: WDC WD4000YR-01PLB0: 51C
/dev/sde: WDC WD4000YR-01PLB0: 49C
/dev/sdf: WDC WD4000YR-01PLB0: 44C
Possibly, it can have some impact on a CPU, which is a Pentium M, and doesn’t have a fan in this device…
I am amazed nobody has mentioned the old reliable “repair shop” way, which is simply pop the side off and stick a $10 box fan on low by it. I learned it from my boss who had 10 SCSI drives in a standard ATX case. It never did get hot. I’ve got 2 HDDs in an old Pavilion (worst case ever built,heat wise) and without the box fan trick there was no fan able to keep them cool. But with “old boxie” set to low my HDDs stay a cool 86f and that is with this machine running 24/7.
With this trick I haven’t had a hard drive fail on me in ages. In fact,my desk drawer still has good 6-20Gb drives lying in it for when somebody needs a spare. My OS drive in this box is an old 20Gb Seagate that is so old it came with the “brand new” WinME,LOL! With a good quiet box fan it isn’t nearly as loud as the case fans it replaced and the cooling results are ten times better.
Well it really rather interesting to read other people views on HDD temperatures. However, just bear in mind that we our experience is pretty puny when say compared to Google. Which, if you didn’t know, released details of a hard drive survey which includes such exciting things as " …and there is less correlation between drive temperature and failure rates than might have been expected, and drives that are cooled excessively actually fail more often than those running a little hot…"
IMO, it’s down to changes in temperature. In the scenario of a machine that is constantly on, the hard drives will operate at an average temperature for prolonged periods. The opposite for a system that is power cycled more times than I have cups of tea. The constant cold to hot will stress the drives. Just my opinion of course …
Interesting read here. I am a huge believer in case airflow. Good air in, bad air out. 2 120mm intake fans, 120mm exhaust, 90mm intake, 90mm exhaust, and the 120mm in the psu, a 120mm on the cpu.
Nothing runs over 50c ever. Even the video card. same amount of air in as out, and it is like an open setup only better.
Current temps @ 27c ambient, all fans running silent (17db max) hdd, 32c, 33c, 29cc 28c. Cpu 32c, Gpu, 38c.
If you value silence buy a decent $10 fan, or a fan controller. It will make everything last alot longer. Or go the long route and customize with a few extra led fans.
Or go with the box fan idea. Seen it done to overclock, no reason you couldn’t use it with a computer 24/7. And the put out quite a bit of air even on low.
Okay, this is the solution I came up with. See, I have an Antec Sonata 2 case, and the design of the case forces you to use the plastic insolation, as removing it leaves you with an inopperable screw hole, as it’s wider then the hole required.
This is the solution I came up with:
First, I removed both floppy disk slides, including the one with the floppy drive in it. Hell, there’s no more need for floppy disks these days. So, I took my seagate 200gig and mounted it to the floppy disk slide, upside-down. As in the slide is now mounted upside-down, leaving the drive in the middle, sitting halfway between the 2 floppy disk slots.
Phase 2: Sealing all the gaps. A PC case comes designed to leak air at every joint. But sealing the case up too much creates a degree of pressure, and pressure isn’t a good thing, we want to maximise the airflow, not restrict it, or pressurize it. So, with my temperates all displayed, I trialled and errored sealing the case, and controlling the airflow.
First, I started at the back, make sure the back of the PC has all it’s PCI slot holes closed up, make sure the grill either has it’s holes fanned, or sealed. I just stuck down cardboard where needed. The next part is the front of the PC. I desided that the airfilter was working fairly well at sealing the case as is, so nothing was done to it. Down the side of the 5 1/4" bays I sealed the front bezel using a water tight sealant. Leaving the DVD unsealed, and the floppy bays open.
The results: Most the airflow from the front now passes over the seagate hard drive. Finger testing shows a stable temp at 35 - 36, and that is given I live in Australia without cooling, during a summer that gets very hot.
hello guys… i was going through the views. i am an electrical engg. temperature has a massive effect in the magnetic capability of the medium. (ie) ONE OF THE WAYS TO DEMAGNETIZE A MAGNET iS HEAT IT.
the data in the HDD is stored in a disk by magnetization. So u have to watch the temperature on the HDD or bad sectors may occour( mainly erasing of certain sectors (demagnetization)
Or any loss can occur. the temp tool is good i was searching one to monitor my HDD
I just bought a Cooler Master 690 and it has this big 120mm blue led fan in front of the drive I put in,and the amazing thing is that now i can touch the drive while its working!!! That scared me because in the older smaller case i couldnt touch the drive cause it was so hot! I took physics class and it is true that to demagnetize a magnet is to superheat it (cause the north and south charges can freely move around when heated and lose that magnetic force). thank god i got this case or i probably would of lost all my data =/
I here there is this material that has magnetic properties but isnt subject to heat. Nd-Fe-B magnets anyone?
i’m sorry, but we’re not at the point where everything is 100% efficient.
it may seem crude to you, but i have a case where i can connect and lay my hard-disks neatly on the bottom surface of my computer case. in the past, i’ve tried removing and ferrying hardrives to, from and back to my PC again. from experience the physicality of the drive is affected by the constant wear of tear of an electric current and whatever kinetic energy is part of its … well, nevermind. just think of adequete PC cooling indirectly-- similar to how someone would take dietary supplements for the little benefits that they’re advertised for-- again, for the slightest chance to increase your life-span.
Interesting.
Ideally keeping the case cold is good, but it is undoubtedly noisy too. I’d rather have quiet. Without the 120mm blower sucking air in over my 3 HDDs, they would be pushing up to 40c at idle, but down to a steady 28c with the blower (same temp as the mother board - which also receives some cooling from that fan). I’m tempted to just put up with the 40c for the peace it brings to my bedroom.
That said, the HDDs being largely mechanical would surely adhere to the rule of “electronics cold, mechanics hot”? Totally acceptable to keep the CPU, GPU and NB as close to room temp as possible, but do the mechanical drives really need that?
i took the side panel off my hp amd64 pc with samsung 200gb xp-sp2
i aimed a 3 speed floor fan 6in dia., at the drive
from 8 in away. result is a 26c-30c hd in a cool bedroom that is + or - 68f
thanks a lot… this information surely will help me take good care of my computer
Well that was a good read…
Get a Shuttle…(SN25P)no problems at all…engineered cooling
above all others…I run 2 Seagate 500 gig 7200.11 in (room for 3)
ALso: 8800 GTS SSC 640 mb vid (dual slot)450 w PS…FX60 X2 cpu…
CPU 26 C, System 42 C, GPU 59 C, both HDD 40 C plus another 500
outside in an external SATA case… case socket connects direct to MB.
makes it as fast as internal HDD’s…external reports back 39 C .
Dtemp, HDD Temperature, RivaTuner.
Crysis @ 50 +/- FPS under heavy gaming session only increases all
temps about 10 C +/-…vid card (EVGA) goes up to 78 C…
All in a cool aluminum box the size of a toaster…sweet…
This is pretty funny now that the Google study has come out, which expressly shows no correlation between high hard drive temperature and failure rate.
Good bit of fear mongering though.
Interesting…