Two Hard Drive Coolers Compared

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virtualban

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I once got two hdd coolers that were just fans that were mounted under the hdd, and they were cheap enough and performed good enough. Seeing the small difference between heatsink or no heatsink, I believe just fans can do it most of the time. Anyway, a well ventilated case is the better choice!
 
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I wonder how they longevity of the fans work.

I've tried two disk cooler models ($10 ea) that were
types of fans that screwed onto the drive (15K SCSI). One used 2 tiny fans, maybe 2x50mm? -- the other a fan as wide as the HD -- about 70mm. They were by the same company, vantec, and the larger fan had about 80% more airflow at lower RPM's. Rated dB's were about the same. They both brought down the drive between 15C-20C (from +50C -> low 30's (as low as 30C). They both were made from Aluminum. I liked the double-fan model better, on aesthetics -- and it had a lower profile, but after 6 months, the fans wore out! -- I'd open her up and see the fans barely turning. So I'm hoping the larger fan at a lower RPM will have a longer life -- it also might be I got a bum unit. But for $10 ea, they're worth a try. I had a drive cooler that installed in the entire 5" drive space and it also had a real tiny fan -- (fitting vertically in the drive case) -- but the little fan was the first thing to stop working. So I'm a bit leary about those little fans.

I'm looking for some remote monitoring solutions, -- something to allow me to place probes in the computer and can be read by software -- at least the computer would know when there was a problem. As it is now, it's such an old computer, it just hangs when it gets too hot and on bootup, you might see a thermal failure if it was a cpu fan that stopped....bear skins and stone knives (440BX motherboard, circa 1999)
 

nirgal

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How does a 2.5" slot mount compare to the results?
And which 2.5" slot do I want compared? All of them.
A floppy disk slot is different from the extra HD slots in terms of air flow - even if there were no front fan or even an option for it.
 

jhansonxi

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According to a white paper from Google Labs which details their drive failure statistics for nine months (they have thousands in their server farms) drives aren't really affected by heat: http://storagemojo.com/2007/02/19/googles-disk-failure-experience/
 

kittle

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Got any noise measurements handy? The term "low fan noise" is rather subjective.

Personally I found it much easier to mount a fan at the back of my case and put my HDDs near the front and let the fan draw air over the 3 drives that needed cooling. with the above approach you would need 1 cooler for each drive. $10 per cooler is $30 total. my single case fan cost me about $7 -- and its probably quieter than the above coolers.

As for drives getting too hot? ive seen several die in my past due to overheating.
 

Peter Mauritius

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During my long experience in assembling PC's, the very first thing I would stay away from is adding a fan on a hard disk to cool it! In a desktop casing, the hard disk is already being cooled, first by conduction, since the disk is screwed along both its sides to the casing chassis. Secondly, a casing or chassis fan, if installed, is already extracting or blowing air within the casing, causing such airflow to cool down the hard disk.

The real problem with installing hard disk fans is that the forced air actually forces much increased air volumes across the disk, resulting in dust accumulating on its underside, i.e. the PCB. Now, depending on the environment in which the PC is working, this accumulated dust in fact damages the hard disks through the controller! What I'm saying is that the theoretical life increase in letting a disk run cooler is negated several folds by the shorts on its PCB.

This has been my experience. Morever I remember reading somewhere that normal high temperature running of a hard disk is NOT detrimental to its lifespan.

Peter
Mauritius
 

asdasd123123

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100% waste of money, install the HDDs in a ventilated bay, add a slow spinning 80mm or 120 depending on your case, and heat is basically gone.

The ONLY thing that makes hdd's overheat is stale air, as natural convection is nearly non existent on a square block of metal.

The faintest breeze cools them adequately.
Every last hdd case I ever saw or tested either heated the case, or added massive amounts of noise.
 

ceteras

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[citation][nom]asdasd123123[/nom]100% waste of money, install the HDDs in a ventilated bay, add a slow spinning 80mm or 120 depending on your case, and heat is basically gone.The ONLY thing that makes hdd's overheat is stale air, as natural convection is nearly non existent on a square block of metal.The faintest breeze cools them adequately.Every last hdd case I ever saw or tested either heated the case, or added massive amounts of noise.[/citation]

True.
I once put a small cooler on top of a HDD that was getting too hot.
The cooler ran at a slow rpm, and was only blowing a "faint breeze".
The HDD had a normal temperature with the cooler on, although it was not screwed into the case (I was just testing).

I only read this article to find out about the noise, from a trusted source, but I guess THG is not one...
 

milesk

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Back in the days of having computers/servers that needed to run 24/7 and the offices we were in didn't have air conditioning... I found that put fans and aluminum heat sinks on top of them to draw the heat away did allow the drives to last longer.
Heat kills electronic components... another thing that I've discovered with research is that heat can be drawn away from a Hard Drive from the sides where the screws are quicker than through the top of the drive.
There are some rails that have been developed that focus on the sides and moving heat away from the drive.
If you look at this model by Antec... you can really see the sides which are maximum aluminum so it can draw the heat from the body of the drive.
http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=75011
Also, this unit has a digital temp readout on it.
Case Airflow, room temperature, all play a very important part of life of drives and pc's. Also, spending the money and going with a proven winner like www.PCPowerAndCooling.com power supplies is another lifesaver.
 

raybay

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Toms Hardware is slipping down the slimey slope into marketing. Hard drive coolers and case fans are seldeom helpful, and rarely needed.
 

woogie_boogie

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Ventilate your case. Be sure there are no stagnate spots in it. Air goes in the front and side and out the back and top and vwallah! problem solved. I understand why people want to keep everything as cool as possible so if a HDD cooler helps you sleep at night than you better get one :)
 

BillLake

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Hi Guys,

Thanks for the feedback and I agree that a good case is a better solution. As my quote says "a good case can provide the air flow require" However, if you are stuck with a bad case, a system like the SFF HP in the article, you can use one of these to help the heat issues that are created by not ventilating the heat from a fast drive.

Bill
 

I

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The testing showed the drive was not too hot without the cooler. The one main benefit of having it is not the hard drive, it's reducing impedance to airflow so the rear exhaust fan moves more air through the whole system.

9 times out of 10 (including SFF systems) simply taking the front bay plate off and drilling a bunch of tiny holes in it will suffice, though that looks a little ghetto so another option is to take some perforated metal screening, cut it to size and fold the edges so that it can screw to the bay through the regular optical drive mounting holes. By screening I mean heavy stuff like many cases use over the fan holes, not the type of screening found in a screen door.

It would've been interesting to have sound level measurements (or did I overlook them?) because it's not likely that a pair of 4500 RPM fans put up against the front wall of these would only produce 21dB. It seems like deception to me when manufacturers give you the rating of one fan in free air then sell you a product suggesting that product isn't any louder as intended to be used than one of the fans in free air.
 

BillLake

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For those saying that this is not an issue, let me put it this way, room temperature was about 22 C during this testing, the area with the PC rose to 28 due to the heat generated in my lab area. The peak High temp without a cooler was 54 and the peak operating temperature of the drive is 55 as is the Raptor drives, see here

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/manuals/scsi/100195486a.pdf

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1406&p_created=#jumper

So just another couple of degrees this drive is over its operating temp as may others be. So these are a very niche product, they do work and that is what they are supposed to do.

I did not have a way to measure the sound but it was not loud at all, it really surprised me but they were not as loud as the PSU or CPU fan, I really heard that noise and this just blended in. Again sorry I could not provide dB.
 
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Great review Bill. Thanks for all the info. My thinking is "What can it hurt?" I can't think of a reason. If these devices hurt your system I could see all the fuss being warranted but its a heat sink with fans, no big deal. It can only do good. If someone wants to spend $30 bucks on a hdd cooler, let him, what can it hurt? Many people are flaming this article but I'm asking myself why? There are so many things that can go wrong with ones system that the extra 'peace of mind' may be worth it for some. I read above that heat isn't an issue 99% of the time, but I still can't surpress the thought in my mind that heat is bad for all electronics; including hdds. Moreover, 1% of the time is huge! For someone with an extra 30 bucks, why not make it not an issue 100% of the time. Lastly, its not like the coolers did nothing or didn't perform. 20 degrees cooler is very impressive! A $1.50 a degree is cheap!

Stay cool,
- Bob-
 

BillLake

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Thanks Bob, I agree, they really do work as shown, I was surprised that they worked as well as they did. The article is to say if they work, like I said they are a niche product so if you don't need or want them don't worry but if you need something like this, they do work.
 
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Here is a page that has the graphs from the 100,000 ATA disk study that shows definitive proof that reliability and disk drive life actually improve when they run at higher temperatures. Looks to me like these coolers are not only a waste of money for most people, but a bad idea 'cuz they can make the disks die much sooner.

http://storagesecrets.org/2009/01/diskcoolerscam/
 

avatar_raq

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Thanks Bill. I appreciate your article. In my country the room temp in summer exceeds 50 C because we don't have enough electrical power to run air conditioners, so cooling every single hardware component is a must for rock-solid operation. To Other guys: I know you don't have the extreme weather we have here, but try to remember you are not the only ones running high-end PCs in the world! Thanks.
 

rabelasian

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I've built and maintained thousands of pcs over the span of 10 years - my advice : cheap and common consumer-grade hdds have critical mechanical parts glued together instead of soldered - THEY ARE AFFECTED by heat and will die quicker. I've tried using more expensive cooling rigs like the ones in this review and they've helped - but these ones are too expensive. Also, Peter Mauritius is right about dust damaging the PCB - it also gets in the drive itself, believe it or not. If you have a good case (good airflow), the best thing is an hdd heatsink, that's it. Don't pay more than 20$.
 
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