Fan for hard drives or not?

[imported_stev]

For a year, I ran two hard drives in my Antec TX640B within a 3.5" enclosure that holds three drives. Hard drive temps usually maxed out at 35-38 C, but got as high as 42-45 C on a hot day. Seagate lists the max operating temp at 55 C.

This weekend, I stuck an 80 mm fan in the hard drive enclosure's fan mount and temps went down to around 28-30 C at the same ambient temps that I was seeing around 35 C without the fan.

I am wondering if it is really necessary to have a fan to cool the harddrive? I'm looking for proof that longevity/reliability of a hard drive can be affected at the temps they are experiencing.

In my personal experience will Dell machines, none of them had fans blowing on the hard drives. In fact, my last Dell just had a duct going from the CPU heatsink to the side of the case and a 92 mm fan was blowing the air out of the case. Aside from in the PSU, that was the only fan! One of my two current hard drives was even in this machine.

Right now, I'm trying to pin down exactly what is and isn't needed for cooling to make my machine as quiet as possible without being anywhere near risking my hardware.

 

[NuAlphaMan]

Well OP, I think it will be who you ask. I like you have for years run my hard drives without a fan and haven't had a problem. I've played games, I've done computer programming and the like on it and never had a problem.

 

[Oyeve]

Cooler HDs cant hurt. I run six of em and have 2 80mm fans blowing directly on them. I dont know what the temps are but they have been running great. BTW, what do you use to check the HD temps?

 

[imported_stev]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Cooler HDs cant hurt. I run six of em and have 2 80mm fans blowing directly on them. I dont know what the temps are but they have been running great. BTW, what do you use to check the HD temps?

Yeah, cooler HDs can't hurt, but the motor/vibrational noise from a couple 80 mm fans might be pretty annoying. If they needed it, that would be fine with me, but if they don't, then it's extra noise for nothing. Anyway, I check HD temps with SpeedFan.

 

[HannibalX]

My Antec case has a removeable HD cage with an 80MM fan built in that blows right on the drives. It keeps my 74GB Raptor considerably cooler than without the fan.

 

[imported_stev]

Originally posted by: Trinitron
My Antec case has a removeable HD cage with an 80MM fan built in that blows right on the drives. It keeps my 74GB Raptor considerably cooler than without the fan.

Is it well within the temp specs of the hard drive without the fan? We don't need to make the hard drive comfortable. If it's well within the specs, I would think it would be fine, but I'm looking for some kind of evidence that long-term hard drive temps in the 40s will adversely affect the drive.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Well, without a fan, the varying temps the hds will see make them work harder to compensate for internal thermal expansion. Higher internal temps should make the bearings expand, leading to more wear.

I have used fans on hds since the introduction of 7200rpm drives, and have yet to have one fail. I do usually use 12cm fans.

 

[bob4432]

15K and 10K = always a fan
7.2K = fan if there is room, ie - no modding to get fan on just a single 7.2k hdd, but if there is more than 1 i will figure out a way to put a fan on them

 

[SparkyJJO]

Samsung, Seagate, WD - no fan needed but never a bad idea really.
Maxtor - yup, needs a fan! Hot little buggers... In my experience they have died much more often when not cooled by a fan.

 

[pcy]

Hi,


Cooler is good.


But it does not make that much difference so long as the HD never goes over 55C and normally satays well under 50C.



Peter

 

[DaveSimmons]

My antec cases have 120mm intake fan mounts so I use low-speed / near-silent Nexus fans. SilentPCReview says the Scythe 800 rpm fan is a good deal for the price.

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
Samsung, Seagate, WD - no fan needed but never a bad idea really.
Maxtor - yup, needs a fan! Hot little buggers... In my experience they have died much more often when not cooled by a fan.

It depends more upon the specific model than the manufacturer. But, if anything, yeah Maxtor are hot li'l buggers now that they are nothing but a Seagate brand which in overall take the crown for being hot 'n' noisy.

The more platters within a model range the more heat. Ergo, those four-platter Seagate 7200.10's (750GB) are muy caliente! Still, as long as a drive is kept within operating temperatures it should have as good a chance as any of enjoying the average rated lifespan.

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if frequent fluctuations to the extremes of normal operating range are more detrimental than maintaining constant at the higher end of that range.

Maybe if the intent is to maximize the potential lifespan (that is, exceed rated), then maintaining at the lower end could be beneficial. But any single drive could just as well fall outside of the average and fail prematurely anyway thus wasting your efforts and adding noise for naught.

Prolly for our purposes and in general, "do what Dell does" is appropriate. But if it is possible to add a li'l cooling without being obtrusive then why not?

Gee, that was a long slog for a wishy-washy answer wasn't it? But it does come down to finding a practical balance in the end.

 

[imported_stev]

Auric, you're right, this is probably the best we can do. Unless someone had a bunch of hard drives to really test this, we just have to weigh our options. I figured I would get a lot of responses about what people have done with their own systems, but I wanted to make sure there wasn't any hard data on this question.

 

[deathsupport]

As everyone said, cooler is better, but not a priority. Sort of the same with RAM... we would like cooler RAM to get better timings, but it's not always easy or possible to get a fan blowing on them.
My case has a front 120 mm fan port, and the hard drive cage sits right behind it, so there's constantly a fan blowing on them. If you do choose to use a fan, I highly recommend investing in a dust filter... after a while a lot of dust can accumulate, and hard drives are quite vulnerable..

 

[imported_stev]

Unfortunately, my case only has 80 mm fan mounts in the front, but it'll work, just with more noise. It was my first case so it's been a learning experience. However, it has a little plastic filter screen in front which has done a great job catching dust. In a year, I've vacuumed the filter twice and the rest of the inside of the case is pretty clean. There was a thin dust film on the hard drives when I took them out to mount the fan, but that's it.

 

[Sforsyth]

I have 2 Maxtor 16 MB Caches 250 GB IDE drives in 2 different pc's and they get hot I have a cooler on my in my PC but not yet in my other system but I do want to get a cooler for it just in case, nearly burned my figure off last time I touched it.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: Sforsyth
I have 2 Maxtor 16 MB Caches 250 GB IDE drives in 2 different pc's and they get hot I have a cooler on my in my PC but not yet in my other system but I do want to get a cooler for it just in case, nearly burned my figure off last time I touched it.

Thats way too hot dude!

 

[Seekermeister]

SpeedFan show that my SATAs run about 7-11C cooler than my IDE drives. I don't have a fan on the IDE drives, because the case isn't designed to vent that bay. The temperature drop may not be critical, but like others, I'm sure that it doesn't hurt.

 

[hoorah]

Has anyone ever tried sticking any heatsinks on the chipset on the controller card of the hard drive?

Granted, it may make it difficult to install in another configuration or drive tray, but thats usually one of the hottest parts I've noticed when I've taken out hard drives that were up to temp.

 

[Sforsyth]

Originally posted by: hoorah
Has anyone ever tried sticking any heatsinks on the chipset on the controller card of the hard drive?

Granted, it may make it difficult to install in another configuration or drive tray, but thats usually one of the hottest parts I've noticed when I've taken out hard drives that were up to temp.

The Hard drive cooler I use is like a big heatsink that wraps around the HD and the fans blow in from the front of it I think it is aluminum or something. sort of like this one: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=HD-COOLER-DT&cpc=SUGG

 

[JEDIYoda]

Originally posted by: stev

Originally posted by: Trinitron
My Antec case has a removeable HD cage with an 80MM fan built in that blows right on the drives. It keeps my 74GB Raptor considerably cooler than without the fan.

Is it well within the temp specs of the hard drive without the fan? We don't need to make the hard drive comfortable. If it's well within the specs, I would think it would be fine, but I'm looking for some kind of evidence that long-term hard drive temps in the 40s will adversely affect the drive.

why? juswt plain common sense dictates that lower temps equate to a longer life...no studies need to be done in order to apply common sense to this thread!! or for some not so common sense!!

 

[yosuke188]

Just keep the temp in a reasonable range (usually less than 40C). If it starts to get close to 50C, then get a fan, but otherwise, it's optional. I personally don't use a fan for the HD because I like my computer running quietly.

 

[Seekermeister]

It would appear that stev wants something in black and white, so maybe this will satisfy him/her:

http://www.heatsink-guide.com/content.php?content=hdd.shtml

Most recent IDE hard drives come with internal temperature sensors, and are capable of reporting their operating temperature via SMART; software utilities are available for displaying the temperature of your hard drive. This temperature readout is not very precise, but definitely good enough to give you a hint whether your drive is running too hot or not. Consult the website of your hard drive manufacturer to learn about the maximum operating temperature of your hard drive. Typical maximum temperature range is 50-55°C, with some drives being able to operate at up to 60°C.

There is, however, an important factor to consider:
Unlike CPUs, which are reliable parts, and fail rarely (even when operated very close to their maximum temperature), hard drives tend to fail more often than any other part in the PC. The MTBF (mean time between failure) of a hard drive can be substantially increased by lowering the drive's temperature. Some drive manufacturers even state this fact in their drives data sheets; but even if this information isn't included there, it is still true. So, even if your drive never exceeds its maximum allowed operating temperature, additional cooling will improve the drive's reliability. Unless you do daily backups, a hard drive failure usually results in substantial data loss - investing a small amount of time and money in your drive's cooling solution can often prevent the need for data recovery (which isn't cheap).

 

[zephyrprime]

It all depends on the air flow pattern in the case. Most cases have poor airflow patterns but most people on AT compensate for that by having huge CFM numbers. Computers from dell are pretty well engineered for airflow. Computers from Compaq like I have are horrible. The case on my 1710nx has 2 side vents. Most people would thing this is good but's it's in fact not on a case with no fans and a PSU with only one fan. Having the vents where they are means that there is virtually no airflow in the front of the case where the HDs are and all the air flow is right around the CPU. This is good for the cpu but bad for everything else in the computer.

To make things worse, the drive racks are screwless but as a consequece of this, there was little metal to metal contact between the racks and the drives.

When I added a second HD to the computer and copied over a lot of files, the started making this bad sound and was taking much longer than it should have to copy the quantity of data I was dealing with. I was like "WTF?". A look at the drive's smart info revealed that the drive had hit about 57C.

I taped up the side ports and that brought my hd temps way down. The cpu may have warmed up a little but that doesn't matter in a system that is not overclocked.

By the way, if you stick a heatsink on your hard drive, the best place to put it is on the bottom where the spindle motor is.

 

[Sforsyth]

This is like the one I have http://www.heatsink-guide.com/content.php? content=hdd.shtml Vantec "Ultimate HDD cooler" but mine is an no name brand