HDDs In Antec P190 Case Overheating

[JohnVM]

Hey Guys,

I got the Antec P190 case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16811129028) and 6 Samsung 500GB SATAII drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16822152052) running in a RAID array. I do extended reads/writes to/from them - sometimes for 24 hours at a time.

They frequently overheat causing a drive to show up as failed if running RAID5 and just show errors in RAID0. This is becoming an increasingly large problem resulting in data corruption and inability to use the drives. I would LIKE to run RAID5 as this is important data and I don't want to keep losing it when it fails, but RAID5 seems to overheat 100x faster than RAID0 for some reason, so I've been forced to RAID0 since buying these.

I'm looking for a solution to this problem. The first solution that came to mind was to get a SATA backplane like http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817332011 that has a fan blowing right on the drives. Pros/cons to this solution?

The second solution would be to buy fans to blow right on the drives in the Antec P190 3.5" bays. This would obviously be cheaper, and probably work just as well, but I have no experience installing those types of fans into cases (although I'm sure its not too hard), nor do I know what fans like that would even fit in the Antec P190 case. Does anyone know/have any recommendations? This would probably be my optimal scenario.

The third solution I came up with would be to buy 4 5.25" mount kits with fans for 4 of the drives, but this wouldnt solve all the problems, so is not optimal.

So, does anyone know what fans fit/work well in the Antec P190 case 3.25" bays? Or have any opinions on the solutions listed above?

Thanks.

 

[mervin338]

My first question to you is what kind of RAID card are you using? If you're serious about running a RAID setup you shouldn't be using onboard RAID (hopefully you aren't); you're going to need a high quality RAID card. That alone might solve your problems. Onboard RAID is infinitely more buggy and more prone to fail for a number of reasons including variations like temperature. The only reason I'm suspicious of this is because that case should provide adequate air flow, so part of me is thinking your RAID drivers are the problem, though I could be wrong. Which brings me to my second question: what are your system temperatures in general? That case should have plenty of airflow considering it's got 5 fans. Ideally however, I'd be using a full tower for the kind of setup you've got. The bigger the case the more open space you've got and the better your heat will dissipate. However, that's a mute point considering this isn't what you were asking about; take it as an FYI.

Before I tell you to invest in more fans I want to know more about your system and what you've got in it. I also think you need to isolate things a bit so you can figure out where most of the heat is being generated from. Have you tried running your system with half as many drives to see if you're getting the same heat related issues? Have you considered that the 550w psu that's running your drives might not be up to snuff? Faulty power supplies can cause a system to generate a lot more heat than it normally would.

If your RAID drivers/card isn't the issue and if your psu is working ok then I'd just add a few 120mm fans to the case - considering the hdd bays have additional fan mounts.

 

[NXIL]

Dear John,

agree w/ Mervyn: looking at your P190 case

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...2E16811129028&Tpk=p190

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=81900

Tri speed fans set to "high"?

The "Big boy" (?! Larry Craig?) fan set above default "low" setting?

The two optional 120s installed, for the upper hard drive cage?

Looks like the lower cage has a 120mm fan pulling air across the drives.

Since you have 6 drives, they are in both the upper and lower cages--what are the SMART temp readings?

Air filters clean?

Room temp?

OK, I just saw what you wrote:

The second solution would be to buy fans to blow right on the drives in the Antec P190 3.5" bays. This would obviously be cheaper, and probably work just as well, but I have no experience installing those types of fans into cases (although I'm sure its not too hard), nor do I know what fans like that would even fit in the Antec P190 case. Does anyone know/have any recommendations? This would probably be my optimal scenario.

The 190 takes just standard 120mm fans to cool the upper drive bay.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...9030%2CN82E16811999346

You can use Speedfan to keep a record of your hard drive temps, and show if any of them are heating up as they run/

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

Anyway, as Mervyn said: need a bit more info for the diagnosis....

HTH

NXIL

 

[MarcVenice]

Can't find the p190. If it's anything like the p182, I would suggest distributing all the HD's between the lower and the upper HD chambers. The antec p190 allready comes with kickass cooling, I doubt you could create more airflow by adding in more Fans. Those samsungs are supposed to run the least hot from all 500gb drives so you made a good pick. And you must have a qaulity 550w PSU, unless you have the HD's spin up one after each other using the raid controller you've got. Oh wait, you've got a seperate 550w PSU to power the HD's. Nice

 

[JohnVM]

Yeah I'm using the onboard RAID controller. My mobo is a Gigabyte P35 DQ6. I'm pretty sure it's heat, because if you touch these disks after long writes oh MAN theyre hot.

So that middle drive bay only holds 2 disks (that has the option for a front + back 120mm fan). I don't have those optional fans installed, I'm walking out the door right now to go purchase them.

IMO the problem area is not there though -- it's the bottom drive bay. That drive bay holds 4 disks and only has 1 fan running behind them sucking air over them. I don't think this fan is enough to cool the disks sufficiently. They still get very hot. It'd work much better if I could put another fan before them blowing air over them too. I messed with the case last night, it looks like there's enough space to jam a 120MM fan inbetween teh case and drives. Do you think this would cause problems? Fan vibrations break the drives?

Don't think it's a PSU problem. There's 2 seperate PSU's in this case, they're in a different chamber, and dont run particularly hot.

 

[mervin338]

I've never trusted antec power supplies. Just last week I was helping a guy on another forum troubleshoot problems with this exact same case and it turned out one of his psu's was bad. Not saying that this is the problem you're having though. I also don't think you should be using onboard RAID. Maybe if you were running a simple RAID configuration I'd say it's ok, but not with the setup you've got. Onboard RAID is buggy, and manufacturers add the feature onto their boards because it's popular and because they'll sell more boards - not because it's high quality or reliable. If it were they wouldn't be selling RAID cards that costs as much or more than most motherboards. You didn't mention what you've done to troubleshoot the problem though? Have you spaced out the drives, or tried removing drives from the array to see if it still functions? I'm not convinced at all that it's a air flow issue. As a matter of fact, I'm willing to bet that those additional fans you're purchasing won't solve your problems (but I'm really hoping I'm wrong and those fans do the trick for you). What are your system temperatures? I want to know the system temp and the PWM temp specifically.

 

[JohnVM]

The fans definitely did not solve the problem. I did try spacing out the drives, and at first it looked like that helped the problem, but now the problems are continuing. I added the new fans yesterday and I'm still having catastrophic failures. RAID5 failed within 3 minutes. Three. The drives were very cool at that point too. RAID0 failed after about 7 hours, drives still seeming pretty cool. Then I tried to do a format, and 3 out of 6 disks in the RAID0 showed "Error Occurred" (full format, not quick), just from the format.

You think this could be a power issue? I'm rapidly running out of ideas short of purchasing an expensive RAID controller.

I'll have to get the system temp when data's importing, so I'll start doing that now and get back to you.

 

[MarcVenice]

Can't you buy a raid controller somewhere which can be returned if it isn't solving the problems? Raid controllers are nice though, they also let you spin up the HD's in any sequence you like, meaning the PSU takes less of a hit when the PC boots. The HD's failing couldn't really be because of the PSU btw, unless the ripple on the PSU is insanely high, but that probably would have killed them already. Anyways, if you can afford 6 500gh hd's, then you can afford a raidcontroller.

 

[mervin338]

Forget about the system temps. I was only asking because I wanted to see just how much heat you had in your system, but it's a mute point now because we know heat isn't the issue.

Ok, lets get back to basics for just a minute because we still know almost nothing about your system or the setup you've got. Did you ever run this system using only a single drive, or did you buy it all at once and configured it as a RAID setup from the start? How is your system running in general when it's running off of just a single drive? I should have asked you this question before. Do things run smoothly without any errors? I just want to make sure you've got a stable system in general before we start feeding you more advice, so you need to setup your system this way to see how it runs. Have you run any stability tests like Prime 95 or memtest86? Before we start telling you to get a RAID card or a power supply I want to make sure your system functions with the basics. Prime 95 is an overall system stability testing program and memtest86 tests RAM.

When you are running RAID, do you get error messages that pop up shortly before the system fails?

I know how frustrating and annoying this can be, but you're going to need to get back to basics before we can properly diagnose your troubles. My guess is that you're having problems with your RAID drivers, but I won't know that until I know your system is running stable without RAID.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Could be possible that you have a defective drive in the mix somewhere. That may cause issues. But my guess is the onboard raid just isn't handling all those drives too well. As has been said, a raid controller card would be a good way to go.