Will hard drives in a HTPC overheat if the unit is powered on but they aren't in use?

[masty88]

Hi all

I want to build a HTPC that will fit around 6-8 2tb WD Green hard drives (my movies are full bluray rips).

I want to be able to access them one at a time using Kodi to select/play a film.

My question is, what will happen to the other 7 hard drives when I am playing a film from one of the 8 hard drives?

Will they use lots of electricity?

Will they run hot?

Will it shorten the life of the hard drives?

Is there any reason why I shouldn't do this? The alterative approach would be to use lots of SATA docking bases (all of my hard drives are internal).

Thanks in advance for any advice

 

[USAFRet]

Will they use electricity? Yes, but not much. A few watts each at idle.
Hot? Not if your case has good airflow.
Shorten the life? No, not really.

If your system and motherboard can take that many drives, no reason why not.

 

[jsmithepa]

Well you are in luck because I have almost identical situation, except my HDD are on an external drive bay with a 120mm fan blowing at them, but at a very civilized 900 RPM. The drives, which don't spin down, idle at 33c and consume ~10 watt per drive. They only suck major power (2 amps each) during spin-up. Your green drives will spin down by themselves, hence sucking even less power and less heat. Just make sure the case allows good airflow.

The only concern I may have is, there's been complaint of folks saying the green drives spin down TOO QUICKLY, this may interfere with movie playback, and IMHO, spinning down HDD constantly do more harm than good, but I hear this is fixable, you should confirm this yourself. Configure drives to spin down at 30 minutes would be what I would set mine too.