External Drive Temps

[raider102002]

I have a question on external hard drive temperatures, i have i believe an simple drive "Hitachi" 2 tbs and is usually running in mid 50s Celsius and at the moment running 61c today temps in my area were at 75f but it is night and room is cold outside 57f house is 68f. My other drives Samsung 400gig is at 26c and a SDD OCZ 60gig 30c so my external is ruffly running double the other drives temperatures. So my main question would be is mid 50 too high or what i am at now 61 too high for a HD. I would also like to mention that at times when starting up PC the external sometime isn't recognized and would have to plug it in for it to be noticed. My last question is would it be best to open my external drive and simply make it an internal one?

 

[phil22]

I have a Samsung SimpleDrive 1TB and it's currently reading 36C after being plugged in for over an hour, so your temperature seems to be way too high.

The highest temperature I've seen for any of my hard drives, both internal and external, is 44C even after a whole day of the PC being on.

I would test the Hitachi external with WINDFT: http://www.hgst.com/support/downloads/#WINDFT

 

[raider102002]

i did the test short and long one WINDFT and it passed but while doing the long test temps got scary high think peaked at 71c and atm 68c so would my best option be to make it an internal HD think the case it is in has really bad ventilation.

 

[phil22]

It wouldn't hurt to install it internally and see if it's temps come down. Or you could buy a third-party external enclosure for it and if necessary drill a few neat holes in the top half (with the drive removed of course).

You can also buy third-party enclosure with integrated cooling fan if you don't mind shelling out a few more pounds. That's probably the best option as the enclosure can then be used for a different hard drive in future, and it's likely to keep the drive cooler than it would be if fitted internally, surrounded by other components all producing heat.
Example of fan-cooled enclosure here: here: http://www.dabs.com/products/startech-com-ide-sata-hdd-enclosure-3-5--5HJ0.html?src=3

If you do buy an enclosure, take care to read what's the maximum capacity of drive it can handle. max for the one above is 1.5TB

 

[raider102002]

Thank you for all your help phil22 just moved my external to internal and did some test and when idle runs from 30-33c day (night 23-25c) and when utilizing the hard drive it got to 37c but once room cooled down was 34c when using drive. Still think putting it in my Corsair 600t case seems to have cooled it quite well in hottest before was 71c.