Hard Disk Drive OVERHEAT???

[xerb]

Is my HDD overheating?
IDLE temperature is around 50-55c!
At what temperature should my HDD be running at?

PS. Room Temperature is around 30c / 85 F

1TB 7,200 RPM

 

[sminlal]

30C is pretty warm for the room - at that temperature a hard drive at 50-55C is probably not unreasonable. It might be a little better if you could get the temperature down into the high 40s, but the drive will work fine at 50-55C. It just might have a slightly higher chance of failing a little bit sooner.

See: http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/labs.google.com/en//papers/disk_failures.pdf

 

[xerb]

Thanks =D! I'll probably try to get a fan to cool it down to the high 40s.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

You didn't state the brand of drive:

"The operating temperature range for most Seagate hard drives is 5 to 50 degrees Celsius"

For some WD drives "-0° C to 60° C"

"he ideal operating temperature range for Samsung hard drives is between 40º F and 130º F (5º C to 55º C)"

 

[xerb]

One of them is Seagate and the other is Western Digital

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

Well now you have some data - you can see what a reasonable temp should be for a HDD. I have always shot for the 40s or cooler. It may run at 50 and 60c but the life of the drive will fall. If you continue to have cooling issues, you might want to look into a 5.25 HDD bay with active fan.

 

[xerb]

Great, now my hard drives are getting some air. The temps are....35-45 Idle and 45-50 load. Sometime it gets to 55 but it is only when room temperature is high or its just because of load.

 

[xerb]

Best answer selected by xerb.

 

[danielpclark]

I have a slim box and according to the S.M.A.R.T. data on my hard drives they both hit 72C. At which point they both overheated with loud noises. I pulled the plug and left it off a couple of days. One drive has 99 bad sectors now, and the other only 1 bad sector... this is in balance with the usage. Fortunately they both are in working condition.

For Linux users I've created a cron job to protect your computer in case the hard drives are getting to HOT. I put my max limit at 48C with warnings before then. With basic usage I max at 45C. With intense usage I average 55C. Although I have pushed it to see how quickly it would go up. If I can't maintain a temp below 48 I'll have to better ventilate my computer and add more fans. Here's the script https://gist.github.com/3594541