Hard Drive hit 70c?

[cliffro]

Alright, I'm having issues wrapping my head around this one.

I had my sister-in-law order a hard drive to replace a suspected bad one, (lots of bad sectors and Windows was booting insanely slow) upon installing the new drive a Samsung F3 1TB (By Seagate) it was exhibiting the same behavior during attempted Windows installs. So I decided to run some tests on the hard drive and memory, upon loading Seatools I'm prompted that the hard drive has reached 70c! Just trying to install windows!

Info on the system in question, it's an HP that has a Phenom 9150 X4 running @ 1.8ghz, an ECS AM2 MCP61PM-HM Nettle3 motherboard, 4x1GB of DDR2 800 all original stuff except the hard drive. I'm guessing something is wrong with the motherboard as I swapped out memory with some that are known working and the problem persists.

Anyway so it has crappy cooling and all, but my Stepmother's computer has less cooling and during the summer(with no AC) when I replaced her hard drive it's only hit in the 50c range during varied usage including the install of Windows.

So what I'm getting at is this, What is possibly going on that would make that hard drive heat up that much? I mean, I've even had mine hit 51c while sandwiched between two hot seagates with the front fan unplugged and thus no airflow over it but this is the first I've seen of 70c!

 

[knightdog56]

Check your voltage at the hard drive connector with a digital volt meter to see if you have proper voltage and also check the voltages on the motherboard connector to make sure they are within specs.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

I seriously doubt 70C is correct. I would suspect a faulty sensor on the motherboard. Have you tried a different SATA port? You would pretty much have to put it in an oven to get a hard drive to 70C. Personally I would not be comfortable with a drive at 50C. Even my laptop hardly goes over 40C.

Voltages so far out of spec as to raise your HD temps would just kill the drive.

 

[RetiredChief]

Would agree with anort3.
I would check your PSU voltages as you should aleays do anyway. But as anort3 stated for High voltage is not likely, low voltage would, but as voltage drops below 11.4 other problems will also show up. As to the sensor, The HDD sensor is located in the HDD, not the on the MB. But this is easy to verify, just stick your finger on the Drive, 70C is HOT.

You mentioned memory - ALWAYS run memtest 86 from a Bootable CD before installing windows !!

 

[Max1s]

I have the same drive but the 500gb version, Ive never seen it reach over 25 degrees. If it was at 70 it would probably break.
Also @Retired Chief, I agree sometimes when the drive is a little hotter you can touch it and notice, if it was 70 degrees you could touch it and burn your hand.

 

[RetiredChief]

@ 70 C probably as finger got close you could feel the heat, wouldn't need to physically touch - Only reason I recommend the "touch" is HIGHLY unlikely the Case would be that hot. The sensor is probably buried next to the hottest component. For example a CPU core temp may hit 70 C, but you could touch the heat sink, would be quite hot, but would be much cooler.

Much better way is to use one of the temp meters - point an shoot, they are pretty cheap - have a couple.

 

[cliffro]

Thanks for the ideas guys, I told her to order a new motherboard/CPU/Memory and Case prior to posting this. And for the price of those components, it's a helluva lot cheaper than them replacing the whole thing.

I was just curious about that temp, first I've ever seen one get that hot(according to Seatools). It didn't say it was currently running @ 70c just that it had reached it. I'll test the PSU with a multimeter once I get a chance. Hopefully before she orders anything.

Another thought I just had was that it's a very new Seagate version of the Samsung, and the Seatools I used was in the Ultimate Boot CD so it could be and older version and reading the sensor wrong.

 

[RetiredChief]

Correct on possibility of reading the sensor in correct, Algorthium not updated/caliobrated for HDD producted after software.