Medium-Well Hard Drive

[Jim in Canada]

snip<

Maybe you should look into one of these:

http://www.thermaltake.com/products/hdcooler/hdcooler.htm

I got something similar before Christmas, with the two LCD
temperature monitors but without the fan. There are LCD
monitors which run on batteries (a mistake) or run off
computer power, and perhaps you can monitor the drive
temperature over a matter of days.

The power consumption of the drive is for the most part
limited on +5V, because that is used to power the controller.
But the +12V provides power for the drive motor (and perhaps
the actuator), and can draw up to 2 amps before the drive shuts
down and declares a problem.

As others have said, it could be you have a bearing problem,
and when the drive first starts up, there could be enough
lubricant effect to keep the drive running normally for a
while. While your problem could be lack of air circulation,
there will be plenty of computer cases out there, just like
yours, and drives aren't dropping like flies. I think the
symptoms are too suspicious to be just bad luck.

Do you have the drives set up to spin down while running
Seti ? Or does Seti pretty much keep the drive running ?
Maybe you can set up a RAM disk for Seti, if it needs a
scratch disk, allowing the hard drive to spin down. That
will leave the PSU as the remaining "weak link".

Paul

When I went into the bios, I noticed monitor of the case fan was set to
ignore. When I activated it, it went to a red ~1120RPM. But, it is one of
those "smart fans" which is supposed to spin low and quiet, until needed. It
does speed up and slow down on it's own. So if I need a new one, I will also
pick up a "Just Cooler TT900" or a "Cyber Cooler CC290" for the hard drives.

The box has been running (after complete O/S reinstall) full boar for over
24 hours, and the hard drive still has not got near as hot as it did a
couple days ago.

Still a little suspicious as to what caused it. I am also impressed that the
WD hard drive is working at all. With the scorched back plate and other heat
damage, I thought it would have been completely toast. I will be looking
into a new one soon, just-in-case.....I have not got around to see if the
Seagate survived yet, but I will post back.

The HD is set to spin down after 10 min's, but seti may be keeping it busy
to, as it writes it's results every so often. Know of a link to a good ram
disk program? Still with my computers running seti since 2000, this still
does not sound like the heat culprit, but it may help

Thanks Paul.
Jim

Registered: 12/11/2000
Results returned: 8,789
Last result returned: 5/9/2004 9:04:25 AM
Total CPU time: 6.62 yrs
Avg. CPU time: 6:36:13
Result interval: 3:23:53
CPU dedication: 1.943
Rank: 22,917 of 4,985,794 (99.540%)
Users with this rank: 3

 

[bill]

<snip>
<I entered the BIOS just a little while ago and noticed the monitor for the
<case fan was set to ignore. When I set it to monitor, it changed to a red
<~1120 rpm. Maybe the Antec Smart Cool fan is going?? I can not get the
<system to boot up with it set to monitor, as the computer halts and says I
<should check my setup.
<
<Thanks again,
<Jim
<
<
<

I'd put a new fan in there, they're cheap. It looks like your bios
knows that the fan is turning too slow for safe cooling.The slowest
any of my 80mm fans turn is ~2600 rpm. Any lower on the voltage to
make the fan run slower and the fan sometimes fails to start at
all.

Somebody else mentioned the hd drive bearing might be beginning to
fail. It wouldn't hurt to back up any data you can't afford to
lose, just in case. I'd have to figure if it wasn't failing in the
first place, the overheating didn't do it any good.

Bill

 

[Paul]

When I went into the bios, I noticed monitor of the case fan was set to
ignore. When I activated it, it went to a red ~1120RPM. But, it is one of
those "smart fans" which is supposed to spin low and quiet, until needed. It
does speed up and slow down on it's own. So if I need a new one, I will also
pick up a "Just Cooler TT900" or a "Cyber Cooler CC290" for the hard drives.

The box has been running (after complete O/S reinstall) full boar for over
24 hours, and the hard drive still has not got near as hot as it did a
couple days ago.

Still a little suspicious as to what caused it. I am also impressed that the
WD hard drive is working at all. With the scorched back plate and other heat
damage, I thought it would have been completely toast. I will be looking
into a new one soon, just-in-case.....I have not got around to see if the
Seagate survived yet, but I will post back.

The HD is set to spin down after 10 min's, but seti may be keeping it busy
to, as it writes it's results every so often. Know of a link to a good ram
disk program? Still with my computers running seti since 2000, this still
does not sound like the heat culprit, but it may help

Thanks Paul.
Jim

Registered: 12/11/2000
Results returned: 8,789
Last result returned: 5/9/2004 9:04:25 AM
Total CPU time: 6.62 yrs
Avg. CPU time: 6:36:13
Result interval: 3:23:53
CPU dedication: 1.943
Rank: 22,917 of 4,985,794 (99.540%)
Users with this rank: 3

Try a Google search on the two terms "seti ramdisk".
I got plenty of hits, and there is mention of something called
ramdisk98. I experimented with a ramdisk a while back, but
cannot find it right now :-(

As for drive temperature, you should check the "motherboard temp"
using Motherboard Monitor (MBM5). Some people have a delta_t between
the inside of the case (motherboard temp) and the outside world
of 15C, and they need to move more air through the case.

Personally, I would remove the Antec smart fan, and put in
a fixed speed fan, like a Panasonic Panaflo. Select a fan
which gives you a reasonable delta_t and leave it at
that. For example, the Panaflo listed below, has roughly
the same output as the Antec, but will be moving 40CFM of
air at normal room temps. 32dBA isn't that loud (check your
disk drive specs to compare).

http://www.antec-inc.com/pdf/80mm_smartcool.pdf

20C 1650RPM 21dBA 24CFM
50C 2850RPM 34dBA 41CFM

Panaflo 80MM "High" 39.6CFM 32dBA $20 (bigfootcomputers.com)

No tachometer output, install connector manually ?
Order a three pin connector from the drop down menu ?
http://www.bigfootcomputers.com/Mer...een=PROD&Product_Code=2953CFPA&Category_Code=

HTH,
Paul

 

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

Panaflo 80MM "High" 39.6CFM 32dBA $20 (bigfootcomputers.com)

No tachometer output, install connector manually ?
Order a three pin connector from the drop down menu ?
http://www.bigfootcomputers.com/Mer...een=PROD&Product_Code=2953CFPA&Category_Code=

The panaflo-80mm's I have don't seem to have anything wired up to the
third connector on the fan. I plugged a 3-wire cable in just to see
if the signal was present, but nope. No such luck.

The low-speed panaflo's are are nice quiet fans though.

-wolfgang

 

[GMAN]

The case does have a fan drawing air out of the box directly behind the hard
drives....I have built a total of 7 machines ranging from 5 x PIII's to 2 x
P4's and I have never before had to install direct cooling for hard drives.
I am posting from a P4B266 system which is on 24/7 and the drives have no
direct cooling and are fine. Warm, but no where near as hot as the P4PE
system was. . . . I guess hard drive direct cooling will be a feature I will
add from now on to be on the safe side. $24CDN is not that much to pay to
keep a person's data from cooking.

Thanks guys.
Jim

And that fan drawing air out directly behind the hard drives is also pulling
all of the other heat in the box right accross the HD's

 

[Jim in Canada]

Jim in Canada

So, it was the WD that was running hot? Were they both stacked
with no space in between? Here is a link which shows some HDD
temperatures for comparison. Select the correct item, of course...
http://storagereview.com/php/benchmark/bench_sort.php
If you find that there is something abnormal, WD is good about
replacing them...

Both the WD and the SG were running extremely (at the time) hot. There was
an open drive between the two....I took everything apart and reinstalled
just the WD (for now) just to see if I could get a pulse.........it keeps
going, and going.....

Jim