On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 13:30:28 +0200, Tom Schouten doelie@zzz.kotnet.org
wrote:
never trust a hard drive!
especially maxtor you can use them to fry eggs though
No drive vendor is immune. [Seagate, Quantum, Western Digital, Hitachi
blah blah] [snip]all my failed drives were maxtor. all of them were late models (bought in last 3 years). probably all due to overheating. seems you really need to be careful. most of them were replaced in warrantee though.
- Under sustained operation in completely unobstructed free air, all of
these drives reached about the same temperature: 33-35 degrees measured at the hottest point on the case.
- Inside a case, all modern hard drives should have a cooling fan. It
need not be a loud fan, just so there is turbulent air around the drive.
Keeping in mind that the best cooling air is clean air, after all, so a washable foam/fabric air filter can't hurt.
i got one 2 under control now, in an open case with lots of space inbetween them. they stay around this temperature. closing the case makes them very hot indeed. so i suppose fans are really necessary
indeed.Every 10 degrees C rise in temperature ages electronics (including motor drive circuits) twice as fast.
where did you get this info?
Correction: Temperature rise influences MTBF. Temperature rise above a certain threshold increases metal ion migration in semiconductors and affects lubricants used in drive spindles and rotary voice coils :) .
This article refers to 10C:
http://www.powerpulse.net/powerpulse/archive/aa_062001a2.stm (page 2,
bottom)
This article refers to 10F, but includes the important proviso: "above a certain threshold". http://www.protech1.com/articles/coolingART.html
History and explanation of need for drive cooling. http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/op/packCooling.html
The "rule of thumb" is that too much heat is bad for people, power
supplies,
processors, graphics cards and hard drives.
In my experience, several quiet fans are better than one loud one, because airflow is applied where needed.
Fanless designs should probably use the lowest-power, lowest-temperature hard drives available, perhaps choosing laptop drives, 5400RPM, minimum number of platters, minimum number of heads...
Cheers, Lex