Is it necessary to cool HDDs?

[MpG]

The link to the actual Google report wasn't working for me, but if I'm not mistaken, one big red flag for them was having the drives repeatedly going from idle to full load. That, apparently, shortened the drive lifespan more than having the hard-drive running constantly, even at the higher end of temperatures. Probably something to do with lubrication issues. You let a car sit all winter and do nothing, you'll have a big repair bill by springtime too.

[Mr. Gruntsworthy]

Ive only ever had one hard drive crap out on me, it was an old 12.5GB i used in my first computer about six years ago

[Tazer-[X]]

ive had ALOT of drives crap out me :) But, these were drives that were usually in the 5400 RPM catagories, and 40 GB was LARGE than.

[DarKStar]

Originally Posted by MpG

The link to the actual Google report wasn't working for me, but if I'm not mistaken, one big red flag for them was having the drives repeatedly going from idle to full load. That, apparently, shortened the drive lifespan more than having the hard-drive running constantly, even at the higher end of temperatures. Probably something to do with lubrication issues. You let a car sit all winter and do nothing, you'll have a big repair bill by springtime too.

Well it's all relative - turning your HDD on and off will not kill it ! It's how you handle it and how often you do it - Hard Drives are made to handle power cycling, it is all taken into account in its rating - A non defective, healthy drive, should be able to handle on/off cycles - now if you are going to turn on and off your HDD 100 times every day that's one thing, but occasional on/off cycles won't hurt it - you will have upgraded long before it dies from the wear of on/off cycles anyways. I leave mine on 24/7 - keep in mind components have a lifespan, that goes for motherboards, videocards, etc, those capacitors too have a lifespan, power supplies have a lifespan, everything does - if you are not using your computer for long periods of time it is not a bad thing to shut it down, if you are using your computer everyday, then leave it on. It's big changes in temperature that can cause harm - so unless your room temp is -10C and your PC case is a heater, I would not worry much - I know people who cycle their systems on/off twice daily and have had no issues. When a component has defects from the start, this is where on/off cycle may cause it to fail earlier - that can be true with hard drives - but otherwise a healthy component should be fine. Yes the contraction and expansion caused by the heating and cooling of components is real - but you won't kill your components with turning it off once in a while :D

[Tazer-[X]]

its all relative. You could buy a deathstar drive and warn everyone that IDE will only last 2 years. Or, you could buy a $400 scsi drive and find it with bad sectors out of the wrappers. Or, you could get a drive that wont die. Its a machine with moving parts.

[DarKStar]

Back in the days I had a case with 3 of those MaxtorDiamond MAX drives, 80GB each, those ran very hot and were used extensively for video editing in adobe premiere and a matrox RT2500 - I remember running those drives @ 55-57C for very long periods of time, sometimes as much as 4 to 6 hours daily - I've had those drives for well over 7 years and while they are gathering dust now outside, if I plug them in my enclosure they still work fine and have 0 bad sectors and zero problems - I would be more concerned over keeping your case as cool as possible or have proper air circulation inside of it - those 3 HDD had plenty of air circulation but for some reason they ran so hot you could easily burn your fingers if you touched them - Newer HDDs run much cooler, at least the Seagate 320GB and 500GB I have run cool, I've never seen them exceed 43C in full load !

[Cypher^64]

I've never had a HD fail in a personal computer of mine and in the firm I work for now in the 5 years I've been in the I.T department I've only seen 2 fail in desktops and 2 in servers. The desktops are never cooled while the servers are in a temperature controlled room, so I personally do not think that extra HD cooling is required unless there is a ambient case temperature problem to begin with.

[rob123]

as SS Wilson can readily attest, i go through more hard drives than most. i havent lost one since i started mounting fans specifically to cool them. i stack them pretty tight and have managed to shoe horn 10 physical drives into my case. if i grease the sides i think i can fit 2 more. it looks like a bomb went off at a cable factory in there.

before i cooled them i noticed that as tightly spaced they were, they were getting pretty hot. sometimes almost too hot to touch. i usually let it run 24/7.

not to dispute google's study but that kind of heat just cant be very good for them.

the only reason to get rid of them these days is to put in higher capacity drives.

cheers

rob123

[DarKStar]

Originally Posted by rob123

as SS Wilson can readily attest, i go through more hard drives than most. i havent lost one since i started mounting fans specifically to cool them. i stack them pretty tight and have managed to shoe horn 10 physical drives into my case. if i grease the sides i think i can fit 2 more. it looks like a bomb went off at a cable factory in there.

before i cooled them i noticed that as tightly spaced they were, they were getting pretty hot. sometimes almost too hot to touch. i usually let it run 24/7.

not to dispute google's study but that kind of heat just cant be very good for them.

the only reason to get rid of them these days is to put in higher capacity drives.

cheers

rob123

10 HDDs in a case wow - tha's overkill - what the hell were you doing with that many HDD ? If you had 10 older DiamondMax Maxtors, those ran very hot, you'd have FREE heating in the winter (and summer too :D) I've had 3 of those back in the days and they were radiating so much heat that I could install an outtake fan and get FREE heating in the winter and touching the sides once and almost burned my finger :) and those were the non fluid motor type, so you can imagine 10 of those -

[rob123]

now i am totally dedicated to seagate. i have 9 500gb's and one teeny 320 for the system drive. i am down to 1938gb of free space. time to start casting about again.

i use them for things i "find" on the web, (cough,cough--torrents--cough,cough). i do not like to delete old "recordings" and like it when i can watch episodes of shows when i choose.

SS Wilson put it this way once. "Rob doesnt delete things. He just buys more hard drives"

time to start thinking about a storage server.

cheers

rob123