Hard drive Overheating

[hmca]

When I built my second HTPC in a low-profile case, I experienced lockups even though I was using the same MOBO and configuration as my larger box. Eventually I tracked the problem down to an overheating hard drive. Even though the drive SMARTED perfect and only registered 109 deg. F using Speedfan, (My large box always measured around 88 deg. F) I continued to get lockups when playing and recording at the same time. I placed a 60mm fan blowing over the tuners @7V that draws air over the hard drive and the temps dropped 24 deg. F! to 86 deg. F. So far, no lockups. (fingers crossed) While 109 is high, it is within specs. Apparently doing multiple media streams while hot doesn't work for long. Low Profile boxes are a different animal than full height boxes in reguards to airflow!
Others take note if you are experiencing unexplained lockups.

[camus]

All my drives run at 40C (105 F) no matter what. I think one has maxed at 48C but I have never seen it over 44C. This is using Speedfan.

The are all stacked 80,300,320 with about a 1/16th of inch between them. I just had one fail, I thought heat might be an issue, so I rearranged the drives so they had more space and they still run at the same temps. I think Seagates just run hot.

[Menehune]

Yes cooling is required for small cases. My case has three drives mounted one on top the other and when I would transfer files back and forth, the drives would approach 60C and HDD health would send overheating alerts. I added a front 80mm fan to blow across the HDs and the drives now read 25C (idle) and 34C after sustained writes (30 min of copying files onto the server).

Hmm, my WD drives read 24C at idle, my seagate is 27C idling.

[crowland]

Just curious... What are you guys using to measure the temp? Is there some type of software to do this like what I have on my Intel motherboards?

Thanks in advance!!!

[hmca]

Built-in S.M.A.R.T. sensors in the hard drive and "SpeedFan" to read and graph the results