Hard drive at 44C idle... good or bad temp?

ipwn3r456

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Mar 21, 2012
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Hey community,

Whats the safe range temperatures of a HDD? I don't really know about HDD temps, and I am not sure if temps is the factor that it can last longer. Normally on idle is 44-45C, on load is about 48C. Are those good temperatures? Thanks.
 


Uh, my computer is Dell XPS 8300, it's a very bad case for airflow. I am not sure if it have a front case fan on my case.
 

A study at Google shows that it doesn't cause more failures. How do you know that the reported temperature is accurate? In an old server with 2 SATA drives (and a few SCSI drives), the WD2500KS-00MJB0 runs at 46°C while the WD2500YS-01SHB0 runs at 37°C. I doubt the temperature reading is really accurate.
 


I used a software called crystaldiskinfo to detect the temp. Is it accurate?
 
The best thing to do is to touch the housing for the hard drive. You don't need to touch the hard drive directly but if it feels fairly hot then you know it's pretty high. 45C isn't bad but 30-40'F is ideal. High heat won't cause premature failure and it mostly depends on the load, whether the drive is constantly stressed is what i think shortens the life. I don't really know as i never had a desktop hard drive failure, i have 2 that are still good on S.M.A.R.T but my OS drive tends to make some odd noises but still trucking along, the other has some seek problems but it works. (already got data backup)

My temps are around 45'F myself sometimes up to 52'F. Eventually i'd like to try to install a fan on the side or get a case with better airflow (more fans).

With your PC case it probably just has bad airflow, if you can move the drive further down (so it's not absorbing too much heat) and check for wires or anything that could be blocking airflow. Check to make sure the fans are clean and even the processor/heatsink could have a bad collection of dust. If you feel a bit adventurous with your PC you could clean that out. That should improve airflow!
 


I just had to post this because I have to ask myself if anyone actually read this pdf that was linked?

The figure shows that failures
do not increase when the average temperature increases.
In fact, there is a clear trend showing that lower
temperatures are associated with higher failure rates.

Or maybe....

In the
lower and middle temperature ranges, higher temperatures
are not associated with higher failure rates. This is
a fairly surprising result, which could indicate that datacenter
or server designers have more freedom than previously
thought when setting operating temperatures for
equipment that contains disk drives. We can conclude
that at moderate temperature ranges it is likely that there
are other effects which affect failure rates much more
strongly than temperatures do.

I don't know, I just thought it was interesting. I'm only here because I regularly see my 2 year old SSD running at 52°C lately and wondered how hot is too hot.