Toshiba 7200rpm drives run hot?

[arcas]

Last weekend I picked up four 5TB Toshiba "Canvio" external drives. The idea was to shuck the drives and replace the ageing Samsung drives in my NFS server.

These are 7200rpm 5-platter drives so I knew they'd run warm but I didn't realize how warm. Each drive seems to report between 45C and 48C via SMART (assuming 'smartctl' is interpreting the data correctly). The same utility reports that the drives claim their specified maximum temp is 55C so they're within that but it still seems too toasty.

The only 7200rpm drive I have for comparison is a fairly old 1TB Samsung F3 which runs at 39C in the same machine that I'm using to test the Toshiba drives.

Anybody have some large 4-5 platter 7200rpm drives for comparison?

(I'm thinking I might have to return these and wait for deals on 5xxx rpm drives)

 

[Charlie98]

Are these still in the external cases?

Reason I ask... I had Seagate external drive that ran quite hot... upper 40'sC until I took it out of the enclosure and just installed it in my desktop, where it runs as cool as any of my other drives now. As an experiment, I put a 500GB Hitachi back in the enclosure... and, what do you know... it idled at 48C.

 

[master_shake_]

do you have any air flow over them?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I have 8 Toshiba drives in my server, 7 are 7200 rpm. They are all running in the 36-38C range.

I don't know if they're 4-5 platter drives, though - i doubt it.

 

[master_shake_]

i've got 16 7200rpm 2tb toshibas in a norco 4224 ranging between 28 and 30 degrees.

 

[Soulkeeper]

I've got one of the 5TB toshiba internal drives (Device Model: TOSHIBA MD04ACA500)
It runs slightly warmer than the seagate 3TB i've got, but I wouldn't say it's "hot"

29 (Min/Max 23/37)

tops out in the high 30's when using it, I have the intake fans in front of it however.

I'm guessing your external enclosure is the cause of the temps, maybe not enough airflow.

 

[arcas]

Are these still in the external cases?

Reason I ask... I had Seagate external drive that ran quite hot... upper 40'sC until I took it out of the enclosure and just installed it in my desktop, where it runs as cool as any of my other drives now. As an experiment, I put a 500GB Hitachi back in the enclosure... and, what do you know... it idled at 48C.

I only had two available SATA ports on my test machine (I wanted to run a full 'badblocks' test before moving them to my NFS server) so I removed two drives from their USB enclosure. The other two I left in their external enclosures [1].

Both external drives reached 60C about an hour into the test (the write test takes the better part of 3 days) so I put a fan on them from that point forward. That brought their temps down to around 47-48C. About a degree higher than the drives I removed from the USB enclosure. I cannot imagine a drive lasting long in a fanless external enclosure if these temps are typical.

The drives installed internally do have a fan blowing on them though it doesn't offer much CFM. The case is a Fractal Design R5 with the stock fan in front which runs at around 1200RPM. So probably no more than 50cfm. Maybe less.

This evening I powered the machine down for about two hours. It's been back up for just over 45 minutes. Presently the two Toshiba internal drives are idle and reporting 37C and 38C (ambient temp is 23C). So maybe 45+C only happens under sustained activity. That's still a little bothersome because weekly RAID scrub jobs will perform the same sort of hours-long sustained I/O as the entire RAID is sanity-checked.


[1] That in itself was an interesting test. Running 'badblocks' on all 4 drives in parallel and monitoring throughput in the background showed that all 4 drives operating at essentially the same speed...between 115MB/sec and 200MB/sec depending on which cylinders were being tested. All 4 drives finished the 3-day test within about 10 minutes of each other so there was no real performance difference between USB3 vs SATA. I was kind of surprised USB did so well.

 

[arcas]

I've got one of the 5TB toshiba internal drives (Device Model: TOSHIBA MD04ACA500)
It runs slightly warmer than the seagate 3TB i've got, but I wouldn't say it's "hot"

29 (Min/Max 23/37)

tops out in the high 30's when using it, I have the intake fans in front of it however.

Yep, same model. Your drive seems to run about 10C cooler than any of mine. How much airflow do you have blowing over it?

Any chance you could run a sustained read/write test (an hour or more) and report what kind of temperatures you're seeing?

I wonder if 'smartctl' is misinterpreting the temperature values being reported by SMART...

 

[Soulkeeper]

Yep, same model. Your drive seems to run about 10C cooler than any of mine. How much airflow do you have blowing over it?

Any chance you could run a sustained read/write test (an hour or more) and report what kind of temperatures you're seeing?

I wonder if 'smartctl' is misinterpreting the temperature values being reported by SMART...

It's mounted right in front of a 120mm intake fan
800rpm to 2000rpm based on mb temp, so I keep it pretty cool.

I started a nondestructive read/write test now, i'll let you know the max temp I see.
If I remember right the highest i've ever seen it go was 39c when I was loading it up.
EDIT: 1hr+ and it's sitting fine at 32c 880rpm on the fan
I'm guessing it's just your enclosure causing the heat. It likely won't be an issue, but that's just how they designed it I guess :/

 

[arcas]

Okay. Thanks for running the test. BTW, do you know offhand what your ambient temps are?

 

[RAJOD]

TOSHIBA MD04ACA500

I have two of these 5 platter drives. I put them in a Dell workstation with ECC ram for a NAS. They do run a bit hot and one of mine is hotter than the other by around 7c.

One runs at 33c other at 40c.

I swapped drives to make sure it was not the case location causing the heat. When swapped the same drive ran hotter.

I think this is more mass, more platters, more friction and more heat.
The hotter drive seemed to have a tiny bit more vibration when I touch it.
Maybe 5 platters are harder to balance perfectly, if a tiny bit out of balance its going to vibrate more and cause more heat.

I've had mine running 24/7 for around 6 months and no issues. I don't spin them down or sleep mode them. Have another NAS with 2x 2TB WD reds that run at 29c each that is around 4-5 years old no issues too.

They have a warranty and are in RAID 1 ZFS so if it blows up I just send it back.

 

[GAO]

That is not hot. Don't worry.

 

[RAJOD]

Its not too hot as its within the spec. But I looked up drive failure rates and temps. Right around 35c and above the percentage of drive failures starts a steep increase. Maybe a drive at 25c lasts 8 years and the same drive at 45c lasts 5 years.

 

[bbhaag]

Maybe it is an air flow issue. If just one drive is running slightly hotter maybe an extra fan might help or maybe re positioning your current fans could help too.

 

[RAJOD]

Maybe it is an air flow issue. If just one drive is running slightly hotter maybe an extra fan might help or maybe re positioning your current fans could help too.

No its not an airflow issue its the drive. I took them out of case and put temp probe on them. One runs hotter. Its just a quality control issue.

 

[CiPHER]

I doubt that is the case, since all heat generated by the drive originates from its power consumption. And the motor to keep the drive spinning and the seek power the head receives should not differ all that much between samples. Surely not enough to allow one drive to be significantly cooler or hotter than others.

More than likely, there is a difference in utilisation and difference in heat dissipation. For example, if the drive is connected with screws to a metal plate, that would act as heatsink - allowing for much lower temperatures. If it is fixated with some plastic mount, the temperature would be much higher.

 

[corkyg]

The Canvio drive case is small. - (3x4x1/2-in). I use mine as a backup data drive, so it is not always on, but, yes, it gets warm. But, so far, no problems from it. It runs on 5 VDC, 1 amp. My biggest criticism is the USB connector on top - it is loose and the connector slips out easily.

 

[RAJOD]

I doubt that is the case, since all heat generated by the drive originates from its power consumption. And the motor to keep the drive spinning and the seek power the head receives should not differ all that much between samples. Surely not enough to allow one drive to be significantly cooler or hotter than others.

More than likely, there is a difference in utilization and difference in heat dissipation. For example, if the drive is connected with screws to a metal plate, that would act as heat-sink - allowing for much lower temperatures. If it is fixated with some plastic mount, the temperature would be much higher.

I thought I explained the drives are indeed different. I swapped mounting areas and also ran tests outside the case. The drives are in raid 1 and nothing running. One drive runs hotter and its from the way it was manufactured. It has more vibration than the other drive.

Its expected to have some variance, they are not all made the same. Sometimes they can even have different parts in the same drive model depending on which vendors they buy from. They just care if they are running within their specs which is a wide range.

I would like them to be the same but they are not and the one that runs hotter is not out of spec so can't send it back. No big deal.

 

[MarkLuvsCS]

I have 4 i stacked in case for extra storage on the server. With no airflow temps ran 55-60, but with a single 120mm fan it dropped to 32-38C. They definitely need some airflow to stay within normal operating ranges i would say.

 

[AlienTech]

From my own testing the Toshiba runs on the low end of the scale, The hottest one is the 1.5TB Seagate which would hit 70C.. I put a heat sink on it to cool it down.. Maybe why they had such high failure rates.. The 1TB model which uses less platters ran the coolest like a green drive. So I think seagate was using a motor that just could not work with more platters but it ran anyway as DC motors can take a lot of load but gets hotter unless they use better motors... My 3TB seagate runs almost neck and neck around 50C.. The 2TB seagate runs much cooler around 45C.. Also the toshibas are much faster than other drives, latency of 11ms compared to 16-18 ms. Makes me think they do use premium parts.. Only reason I bought a 5 platter design.. All of them get very hot in the 60C-70C.. except the ones using lower quality parts which might get even hotter but I stop the drives when I notice them hitting 60C..


Remember, the air flow has a lot to do with how hot the drive gets. It might be external but it would get pretty hot if you use it for a long time. Tried putting a fan on it but it only lowered it to under 50C but good ventilation inside the desktop drops it to 40C.. Even "green" drives will get hot if there is no ventilation and you copy files for an hour.

 

[Blastman]

It's my impression and experience is that new HDD's run a little hotter when new and gradually run a little cooler as the bearings get worn in. And this was especially true of the old drives (years ago) that used steel ballbearings in the bearings instead of the newer FDB (fluid dynamic bearings) in use today.