What IS reasonable disk drive temperature?

Ben Steeves ben.steeves at gmail.com
Sun Jun 12 05:48:57 UTC 2005


On 6/12/05, Tony Nelson <tonynelson at georgeanelson.com> wrote:
> At 12:42 AM -0300 6/12/05, Ben Steeves wrote:
> >On 6/11/05, Neal Rhodes <neal at mnopltd.com> wrote:
> >> Ksensors reports temperature of a dual IDE drive mirrored system as about
> >> 114F on most days.    That seems to be within the manufacturers specs.
> >> Is that reasonable for long term health of drive?
> >
> >It depends on whether that's the drive temperature or the ambient
> >temperature in the case.  I'd say it's pretty reasonable for the
> >ambient temperature (assuming it's a warm late spring where you live
> >iike it is here), but rather high for the drive itself.  The drives
> >should be running around the mid-80's.  You might try spacing the
> >drives out or positioning them nearer an exhaust fan if you can.
> 
> Hard drives are refrigerators, and run cooler than ambient?  Sure about that?

Yes, I am.  As I said, you should put them close to an exhaust fan to
pull warm air off them.  The temperature sensors at the hard drive
should read lower than ambient in a properly built system.  114F is
far to warm for a hd's constant operation, if you expect the HD to
live out its life comfortably.

The current readings in my system are:
 	
hda	29°C
hdb	29°C
CPU	39°C
M/B	34°C
Intake	40°C

...as you can see, it's much cooler at the hard drives than the
ambient case temperature (which is most accurately taken by the intake
sensor in my machine.  Of course, my case is a full tower and the
drives are above the power supply, with two fans providing exhaust for
them.

Personally, I wouldn't run a hard drive over 100F constantly and
expect it to be reliable.
-- 
Ben Steeves                     _                    bcs at metacon.ca
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