Fans and Hard Drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike
  • Start date Start date
M

Mike

I have lost 2 hard drives in the last two months. One being 2 years old and
did not concern me. The other was just recently but Maxtor RMA it
successfully. The Hard drives were IDE types.

I was reading in some articles (but cannot remember what the links are),
that you should not connect fans to the hard drive power leads. Can anyone
confirm this to be true? If this is true, should you connect the LED power
button to hard drive leads as well?

Thanks in advance.
 
You should connect fans to a seperate power lead from the power supply. Fans
can create frequencies that can cause problems.
 
This is not true if your power supply is adaquate, at least 400 watt and
depending on how many processors and other devices you have you might need
600 watts. Always spread out the load. If you have extra power connectors,
use them instead of crowding a single connector.
 
If you mount two Maxtor drives close together, they have a tendency to crap
out as Maxtors run quite hot.. this could equally apply to other makes..
 
If you mount two Maxtor drives close together, they have a tendency to crap
out as Maxtors run quite hot.. this could equally apply to other makes..
Click to expand...

Maxtor drives have a tendency to crap out no matter what you do
with them. Buy Seagate.
 
Ronk,

Which frequencies are these and how does it impact the hard drive's
mechanical performance?
 
Hard drives die due to heat, see if you can use one of the spare heat
sensors from the motherboard and attach it to the hard drive. Your
Motherboard monitoring program should tell you how hot the hard drive is
getting. Check the specs at the manufacturer's site to compare.
If it's getting too hot, consider a 5 1/4 tray device that holds the hard
drive with a built in fan and a temperature readout.
If you were getting interference, the hard disk would respond with freezes
randomly. The fans would have to be spitting out so much rubbish
electrically to do that. Even if the fans were connected on a different
lead, the leads are all common from the power supply, so it wouldn't really
matter.
 
Basic rules I use.

If the cabling allows it, separate feeds for the drive fans. (any component
which is motor-driven, such as fans - which have to start spinning from a
static state, have a quite high 'stall-current" before the fan actually
starts rotating, which will cause a voltage drop to the drive on the same
cable. Miniscule possibly, but depending on the cable cross-area, but it's
still there. The fan, for a short period demands a high current, which
causes a voltage drop to anything else on that cable.

Keep as much breathing space as your case will allow between 2 drives to
give ample airflow above & below each & make sure your case ducting is
pretty dust-free..
Whether the drives are S-ATA or IDE really doesn't come into it AFAIK.

Regarding LEDs, they draw bugger-all current, so I'd just classify that
advice as ignorance/ extremely limited electronic knowledge.

Re. the later post about using Seagate, that's still a debatable point, but
personally I'd go for WD instead until someone eventually PROVES to me that
Seagate has as good a track record as WD.

BTW, it wouldn't do any harm to dig up some Power-supply voltage monitoring
software - you may have one rail that's feeding a voltage way out of
tolerance, seeing you've managed to lose 2 drives in a short period of time.
 
Mike said:
I have lost 2 hard drives in the last two months. One being 2 years old and
did not concern me. The other was just recently but Maxtor RMA it
successfully. The Hard drives were IDE types.
Click to expand...

Have you tested what voltage you ps is actually sending to the drives?
 
Water cooling.

Coolance's hard drive cooler keeps my HDs just above room temperature,
operating 24/7
 
Ah! Good post. Someone else with electrical training! (-:

To add to what you have said, and possibly make it a bit more clear - any
rotational device that is powered up will draw a higher current than the
same device running at a steady state (as can be proven by having an
attached digital VOM monitoring a devices current). If the bearings are
cold, or slightly dry, it will add to the increase. And, when you power up
your computer they ALL come on at once! Quite a shock to an marginally sized
power supply, don't you think?

A motor "may" draw as much as 2-4 times as much current when starting, as
opposed to current usage when running at a steady state.

That being said, I don't think that the corresponding voltage drop caused by
the simultaneous starting of all the small motors would cause physical
damage to "any" of the devices (except maybe the power supply itself - if
it's built in protection doesn't kick in). It may have the effect of
creating hard drive sectors that contain corrupted data - if the device were
trying to write to the drive at that particular instant. But, when the
computer is starting from an "off" state, the drives are reading
information - not writing!

--

Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)
 
Richard Urban said:
[.........] I don't think that the corresponding voltage drop caused
by the simultaneous starting of all the small motors would cause
physical damage to "any" of the devices (except maybe the
power supply itself - if it's built in protection doesn't kick in). It
may have the effect of creating hard drive sectors that contain
corrupted data - if the device were trying to write to the drive
at that particular instant. But, when the computer is starting from
an "off" state, the drives are reading information - not writing!
Click to expand...


The read/write heads depend on a minimum speed for the
heads to "fly" (i.e. be held off the platter by the air wedged
between them and the platter). If the speed should drop
suddenly before the arm can be withdrawn, the heads will
"crash" (i.e. contact the platter), causing the whining sound
of death. It can be imagined that such a scenario would
occur if the voltage were to suddenly drop.

*TimDaniels*
 
It could, but I'm betting that it would not. Even when drives were spinning
at a lowly 4500 RPM the heads were suspended by an "air cushion". The drive
would have to spin down to a almost dead stop while the heads were still in
the data area, and not in the park position.

I believe the designers of the hard drives would have anticipated this
scenario (-:

--

Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)


Timothy Daniels said:
Richard Urban said:
[.........] I don't think that the corresponding voltage drop caused
by the simultaneous starting of all the small motors would cause
physical damage to "any" of the devices (except maybe the
power supply itself - if it's built in protection doesn't kick in). It
may have the effect of creating hard drive sectors that contain
corrupted data - if the device were trying to write to the drive
at that particular instant. But, when the computer is starting from
an "off" state, the drives are reading information - not writing!
Click to expand...


The read/write heads depend on a minimum speed for the
heads to "fly" (i.e. be held off the platter by the air wedged
between them and the platter). If the speed should drop
suddenly before the arm can be withdrawn, the heads will
"crash" (i.e. contact the platter), causing the whining sound
of death. It can be imagined that such a scenario would
occur if the voltage were to suddenly drop.

*TimDaniels*
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for the "Ah! Good post" complement, Crusty, but more importantly your
explanation below.
It's good to learn finer details, even at my age (Septuagenarian)

--

johnf [aka Crusty2 - or do you have a copyright? :-) ]

It could, but I'm betting that it would not. Even when drives were
spinning at a lowly 4500 RPM the heads were suspended by an "air
cushion". The drive would have to spin down to a almost dead stop while
the heads were still in the data area, and not in the park position.

I believe the designers of the hard drives would have anticipated this
scenario (-:

--

Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)


Timothy Daniels said:
Richard Urban said:
[.........] I don't think that the corresponding voltage drop caused
by the simultaneous starting of all the small motors would cause
physical damage to "any" of the devices (except maybe the
power supply itself - if it's built in protection doesn't kick in). It
may have the effect of creating hard drive sectors that contain
corrupted data - if the device were trying to write to the drive
at that particular instant. But, when the computer is starting from
an "off" state, the drives are reading information - not writing!
Click to expand...


The read/write heads depend on a minimum speed for the
heads to "fly" (i.e. be held off the platter by the air wedged
between them and the platter). If the speed should drop
suddenly before the arm can be withdrawn, the heads will
"crash" (i.e. contact the platter), causing the whining sound
of death. It can be imagined that such a scenario would
occur if the voltage were to suddenly drop.

*TimDaniels*
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Gary said:
Ronk,

Which frequencies are these and how does it impact the hard drive's
mechanical performance?
Click to expand...

I think he's been smoking illegal plant-matter.

--
The reader should exercise normal caution and backup the Registry and
data files regularly, and especially before making any changes to their
PC, as well as performing regular virus and spyware scans. I am not
liable for problems or mishaps that occur from the reader using advice
posted here. No warranty, express or implied, is given with the posting
of this message.
 
If you have two hard drives it is better not to install them in adjacent
bays as they tend to heat each other up. Using a fan to cool the drives
helps. I improvised and fitted case fans under mine.
 
Well any fans will produce an AC frequency, and you do not want these
frequencies on a DC line. So you use capacitors to help filter these
frequencies out.
 
Do want I did, installed a 110 VDC fan directly to the PSU after the power
switch. And the EMF (Electric Magnetic Force) does not do anything. Better
air flow, fan lasts longer. If anyone is interested please let me know.

I work for a company that make components for use in Cable / Telephone /
Satellite Systems. We always use 110 VDC fans in all components and there
are many processors in these equipment.
 
Re. the later post about using Seagate, that's still a debatable point, but
personally I'd go for WD instead until someone eventually PROVES to me that
Seagate has as good a track record as WD.

The OP states that the failed drives were Maxtor. I have never had much luck
with Maxtor and have switched to WD, but I will have to consider the Seagate
warranty when I buy another drive. Seagate's is 5 years!!

FWIW, JAX
 
M said:
If you have two hard drives it is better not to install them in adjacent
bays as they tend to heat each other up. Using a fan to cool the drives
helps. I improvised and fitted case fans under mine.
Click to expand...

I use an Antec case that allows the mounting of a 120 mm fan directly in
front of the 4 HDD trays.

FWIW, JAX
 
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