CoolerMaaster Cool Drive 6 LHD-V06

[Mac]

Cooler Master Cool Drive 6

3-4 years ago, SVC had an unbelievably low price on these hard drive coolers and I bought 4 of them. Once I received, I had a double take on whether to install. There were thermal pads that needed to be applied to the bottom of the drive and also what appeared to be thermal compound in the inside top of case. Furthermore, there was a SW install required.

A little more than I wanted to tackle so these have just sat on the shelves. Fast forward to 2009.

I just picked up a couple of 1.5TB drives that I intend to use in a mirrored drive array. Getting a little nervous with all the photos, MP3's etc. that are not backed up. Picked up two of the Samsung 5400 1.5TB drives from Newegg for the incredible price of $160 last week and ready to go.... except no open 3.5 slots.

Pulled out the LHD-V06 again which are all aluminum extruded cases that fit into a 5.25 bay and thinking about installing.

Does anyone have any experience with these drive coolers? How would you rate? Any suggestions/tricks on how best to install?

The thermal compound on the top really puts me off.... looks like the same stuff that comes on some CPU coolers. The stuff basically melts once it is heated to form a bond. Difficult to remove after that.

Tips.... ideas?

BTW-Cross posted in Cases & Cooling

 

[jkresh]

If the drives are mostly for photo's,mp3's... you might be better off using 1 of them as a backup instead of bothering with raid (raid works great if a drive fails or if you need speed (5,6,0,...)) backup will also protect you if a drive fails, + it helps with accidental deletion, virus... where raid wont make a difference.

In terms of the drive cooler, they aren't necessary and if you have good airflow probably wont make much of a differnce (since you have 2 drives you could get a 4 in 3 or 3 in 2, 3.5 to 5.25 adapter, which will probably have its own 120mm fain which would do a good job of keeping the drives cool, assuming you have the requisite 5.25 bays open).

 

[Idontcare]

ditto on jkresh's points, and I will say in support of their post that if your objective here is to reduce the liklihood of loosing existing data then you are far far better off using the drives for backups rather than for raid-1 mirror stuff.

Raid-1 is what you do in hopes of keeping data around that has been created/stored on your computer since the last backup snapshot was taken. Don't do raid1 until you've got the hardware and the habit of making routine backups already in place.

Second thing - seagate for storing files you care about? Seriously? They are balls cheap for a reason...

Third thing - today's hard drives just don't seem to require extreme cooling, the cool drive 6 seems waaaay excessive and needless with modern hdrives. A v-raptor, yes sure put a fan somewhere near it so it stays below 60C peak, but these 7200rpm 1TB monsters of today just don't require excessive cooling methods to ensure reliable operation anymore.

If you are even the slightest bit nervous about using your cool drive 6 now, just imagine how pissed at yourself you are going to be should one of your already questionable quality seagates dies on you in 6 months while laying inside that thing slathered up with some goop that already makes you nervous...you'll never know which purchasing decision led you to that fateful day when your photos disappear.

 

[Mac]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Second thing - seagate for storing files you care about? Seriously? They are balls cheap for a reason...

Third thing - today's hard drives just don't seem to require extreme cooling, the cool drive 6 seems waaaay excessive and needless with modern hdrives. A v-raptor, yes sure put a fan somewhere near it so it stays below 60C peak, but these 7200rpm 1TB monsters of today just don't require excessive cooling methods to ensure reliable operation anymore.

If you are even the slightest bit nervous about using your cool drive 6 now, just imagine how pissed at yourself you are going to be should one of your already questionable quality seagates dies on you in 6 months while laying inside that thing slathered up with some goop that already makes you nervous...you'll never know which purchasing decision led you to that fateful day when your photos disappear.

I appreciate the input but a little confused with remarks about "Seagate" when I stated that the two new drives were Samsung which seemed to get high marks for reliability.

The fact that these were 5400 rpm drives made them more attractive for my intended purpose since the presumed lower heat is more important than performance. I use an older classic mid-tower (Chieftec Dragon) with limited airflow in the upper part of the case.

The point about backups make sense but I felt that having two drives that automatically created a copy of all data was more painless. Basically transparent continual backups for only $80 (the price of the extra drive).

Re the Cooler Master, they only cost about $15 delivered as I recall. Believe a regular cheapo cooloer would cost as much. The primary thing I don't like is the pad of thermal compound on the roof. I have thought about putting a sheet of aluminum foil on top of drive to protect it. The aluminim foil should be a perfect conductor.

 

[jkresh]

Mac, but the issue is its not backup (note I do have a raid 5 system setup), raid 1 is not backup, its a copy for use if a drive fails, but as my prior post listed, backup allso helps if you delete a file, if a virus corupts your data... Raid 1 does not deal with that (no raid does), if backup is important then have weekly/monthly full images with daily updates setup, your data will be safer that way then in just a raid.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Mac

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Second thing - seagate for storing files you care about? Seriously? They are balls cheap for a reason...

Third thing - today's hard drives just don't seem to require extreme cooling, the cool drive 6 seems waaaay excessive and needless with modern hdrives. A v-raptor, yes sure put a fan somewhere near it so it stays below 60C peak, but these 7200rpm 1TB monsters of today just don't require excessive cooling methods to ensure reliable operation anymore.

If you are even the slightest bit nervous about using your cool drive 6 now, just imagine how pissed at yourself you are going to be should one of your already questionable quality seagates dies on you in 6 months while laying inside that thing slathered up with some goop that already makes you nervous...you'll never know which purchasing decision led you to that fateful day when your photos disappear.

I appreciate the input but a little confused with remarks about "Seagate" when I stated that the two new drives were Samsung which seemed to get high marks for reliability.

The fact that these were 5400 rpm drives made them more attractive for my intended purpose since the presumed lower heat is more important than performance. I use an older classic mid-tower (Chieftec Dragon) with limited airflow in the upper part of the case.

The point about backups make sense but I felt that having two drives that automatically created a copy of all data was more painless. Basically transparent continual backups for only $80 (the price of the extra drive).

Re the Cooler Master, they only cost about $15 delivered as I recall. Believe a regular cheapo cooloer would cost as much. The primary thing I don't like is the pad of thermal compound on the roof. I have thought about putting a sheet of aluminum foil on top of drive to protect it. The aluminim foil should be a perfect conductor.

My bad...I read samsung but somehow my brain was thinking you wrote seagate...yeah the samsung drives are good.

Any way to remove the thermal compound from the enclosure? Using a sacrificial interface like Al foil is a great idea too, genius. I'd go with that if it were me.

The problem with relying on raid-1 for "backup" is that it doesn't provide any user-error fault protection or redundancy (a wrong delete on a folder, format the wrong drive) and doesn't provide any extra level of mother-nature type disaster scenarios (house burns down) or against electrical failures upstream of the hdrives (PSU, mobo, house) and also doesn't prevent data corruption from simply being mirrored data corruption as your cpu dies or the ram is dying, etc. (or computer theft if you have a break-in)

For the home user, raid1 really buys you very little in terms of practical risk reduction of potential data loss. Physical backup with offsite storage is the most bang-for-the-buck thing you can do to reduce your chances of losing your precious electronic documents.

(I keep my external drive in my car except when making backups, that way anytime I am not at my house so to are my data backups)