Hard drive cooling suggestions?

[John Corliss]

My system is set up with two hard drives and I use XXCopy:

http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm

to clone one to the other on demand. I do *not* use RAID because I want
control over when a backup copy is made. Unfortunately, I recently fried
my main hard drive and had to send it back.

Yesterday, I received the replacement hard drive from Newegg.com and
have installed it. Since I've now gone through two secondary hard drives
in what I consider to be short order, it's time to figure out why this
is happening. Kony (my thanks to you!) and somebody else (sorry, I can't
find the thread now) suggested that I look into cooling the hard drives.
This makes a lot of sense to me because they're mounted right on top of
one another, and when I touch them after running the computer for a
while, they're both rather warm - bordering on HOT.

Time to cool those puppies.

I've been looking at various fan additions and what I really want to do
is to blow directly ONTO the hard drives in order to maximize heat
removal. This, however, will blow dust onto the hard drives and as Kony
mentioned, "while a drive is sealed, most have a filtered vent hole
still." This means that dust still has a way into the drive, although
it's a difficult path. Thus, I would think that it's better to suck air
away from the drives rather than blow onto them.

Mounting a hard drive in a fan unit that fits into a spare 5.25" bay is
not an option, because I want to cool both hard drives. However, I'm
thinking of additionally adding a 5.25" bay mounted case fan in the
middle bay (I have three) to cool my two DVD drives and provide
additional case ventilation.

But back to the hard drives, I'd like to find something that will mount
so as to suck the hot air right off of the hard drives and out of the
case. I would prefer not to use something that will suck the heat off of
the hard drives and distribute it into the case, but maybe that
additional fan in the 5.25" empty bay will render that concern of no
consequence. Any recommendations?

TIA

 

[John]

But back to the hard drives, I'd like to find something that will mount
so as to suck the hot air right off of the hard drives and out of the
case. I would prefer not to use something that will suck the heat off of
the hard drives and distribute it into the case, but maybe that
additional fan in the 5.25" empty bay will render that concern of no
consequence. Any recommendations?

TIA

Yeah Ive noticed 7200 drives get pretty hot. Thats why I always leave
some space between them. That seems like the minimum you should do.
Most of the people I know as Ive mentioned and on my systems --- HDs
hardly ever fail physically that is. But Ive been using cooling and
spacing them apart and most of PCs from people I know their systems
are modest so they only have one HD so there arent two or 3 of them
all crammed into a small space.

There are probablly all kinds of cooling systems but Ive only seen 3
main ones around here. One is particular to my style of Antec case.
Antec and maybe some others have 3.5 inch drive cages where you can
stick a standard 80mm fan in the front of the removable cage. So its
easy to face it in or out - blowing in or out. Ive only seen it on the
full tower Antec cases.

The others are the belly pan with two dinky fans. All these are 10
bucks or less at COMPUSA and many other places. I think they blow air
in though Im not 100% sure. You might be able to mount them in the
other direction. I cant remember how they are mounted but I assume
they are with screws. The problem with the belly pan is they take up
space. On my system if I use the HDs in the 5.25 slots the belly pans
take up a fair amount of vertical space so that I cant space them the
way I normally do and it reduces the amount of drives I can install.

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=289662&pfp=BROWSE

The other popular one is the 5.25 slot faceplate that has two tiny
fans built in. I assume you can remount the fans outward to blow out
but I dont know. You can find those everywhere even Compusa.
http://www.casecooler.com/514slothardr.html

I havent tried the bellypan on the 3.5 inch but obviously it should
fit as its the same size as the HD it just takes up verical space so
there might be the spacing problem again. I use the 80mm case fan in
the 3,5 cage as I mentioned they have for Antecs.

There are lots of variations Im sure - ones with heatsinks too that
cost way more and jackets with fan cooling etc. Theres those pull out
cases for the 5.25 slots like this with fan cooling

http://www.circotech.com/rm-133w.html



If you are a noise freak then Zalman makes one for the HD thats
noiseless but have no idea if it works.

http://www.casecooler.com/zahehadrco.html


Heres another interesting one that takes up one whole drive slot

http://www.casecooler.com/lahadidrco.html

 

[MrGrumpy]

You need to insure your case is properly ventilated / has airflow.
Decent cases usually have 2 or 3 case fans.
Use a 'cheap' stock case, add much 'extra' hw and you will have problems.
A decent case will cost some 3* more than a stock case.

 

[John Corliss]

My system is set up with two hard drives and I use XXCopy:

http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm

to clone one to the other on demand. I do *not* use RAID because I want
control over when a backup copy is made. Unfortunately, I recently fried
my main hard drive and had to send it back.

Yesterday, I received the replacement hard drive from Newegg.com and
have installed it. Since I've now gone through two secondary hard drives
in what I consider to be short order, it's time to figure out why this
is happening. Kony (my thanks to you!) and somebody else (sorry, I can't
find the thread now) suggested that I look into cooling the hard drives.
This makes a lot of sense to me because they're mounted right on top of
one another, and when I touch them after running the computer for a
while, they're both rather warm - bordering on HOT.

Time to cool those puppies.

I've been looking at various fan additions and what I really want to do
is to blow directly ONTO the hard drives in order to maximize heat
removal. This, however, will blow dust onto the hard drives and as Kony
mentioned, "while a drive is sealed, most have a filtered vent hole
still." This means that dust still has a way into the drive, although
it's a difficult path. Thus, I would think that it's better to suck air
away from the drives rather than blow onto them.

Mounting a hard drive in a fan unit that fits into a spare 5.25" bay is
not an option, because I want to cool both hard drives. However, I'm
thinking of additionally adding a 5.25" bay mounted case fan in the
middle bay (I have three) to cool my two DVD drives and provide
additional case ventilation.

But back to the hard drives, I'd like to find something that will mount
so as to suck the hot air right off of the hard drives and out of the
case. I would prefer not to use something that will suck the heat off of
the hard drives and distribute it into the case, but maybe that
additional fan in the 5.25" empty bay will render that concern of no
consequence. Any recommendations?

TIA

I just found this setup:

http://proline.com/tech/stacker/index.htm

It mounts to the bottom of the case using velcro. I like the way it
leaves a space under the bottom-most drive. Kinda low air flow (only
10.4 cfm total) but that might be enough since it's in addition to spacing.

Looks like it might work if I used it in conjunction with a 5.25" bay
fan setup.

It still amazes me the way that my case's slide-in hard drive mounting
bracket stacks the hard drives so closely together. True stupidity on
the part of some engineer. For the time being I think I'll fabricate an
extension of some sort so that I can get some space between the two hard
drives.

 

[Paul]

My system is set up with two hard drives and I use XXCopy:

http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm

to clone one to the other on demand. I do *not* use RAID because I want
control over when a backup copy is made. Unfortunately, I recently fried
my main hard drive and had to send it back.

Yesterday, I received the replacement hard drive from Newegg.com and
have installed it. Since I've now gone through two secondary hard drives
in what I consider to be short order, it's time to figure out why this
is happening. Kony (my thanks to you!) and somebody else (sorry, I can't
find the thread now) suggested that I look into cooling the hard drives.
This makes a lot of sense to me because they're mounted right on top of
one another, and when I touch them after running the computer for a
while, they're both rather warm - bordering on HOT.

Time to cool those puppies.

I've been looking at various fan additions and what I really want to do
is to blow directly ONTO the hard drives in order to maximize heat
removal. This, however, will blow dust onto the hard drives and as Kony
mentioned, "while a drive is sealed, most have a filtered vent hole
still." This means that dust still has a way into the drive, although
it's a difficult path. Thus, I would think that it's better to suck air
away from the drives rather than blow onto them.

Mounting a hard drive in a fan unit that fits into a spare 5.25" bay is
not an option, because I want to cool both hard drives. However, I'm
thinking of additionally adding a 5.25" bay mounted case fan in the
middle bay (I have three) to cool my two DVD drives and provide
additional case ventilation.

But back to the hard drives, I'd like to find something that will mount
so as to suck the hot air right off of the hard drives and out of the
case. I would prefer not to use something that will suck the heat off of
the hard drives and distribute it into the case, but maybe that
additional fan in the 5.25" empty bay will render that concern of no
consequence. Any recommendations?

TIA

If you look at this patent application, I don't think anything is
getting through that breather hole The breather hole is only
intended for pressure equilization, when barometric pressure changes.

http://www.wipo.int/ipdl/IPDL-CIMAGES/view/pct/getbykey5?KEY=01/14041.010301&ELEMENT_SET=DECL

Example of a commercial breather hole filter:
http://www.donaldson.com/en/diskdrive/support/datalibrary/000610.pdf

Also, from an IBM disk manual:

"Do not cover the breather hole! Covering the
breather hole may result in loss of data."

I still don't understand why the pressure is so significant. If
you take a computer to Boulder Colorado, the air inside the HDA is
going to get thinner, so big deal ? I wonder if flexure of the
cover is the problem ?

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/op/packAir.html

No matter how you move air over the disk, the air is a soup of
particles that are monstrous in size compared to the aperture on
the breather filter. A more dangerous situation, would be opening
a bottle of solvent next to the drive, as vapour phase is likely
to be a more effective poison than particulate (even if there is
a diffuser channel).

*******
I built a frame that fits over three 5.25" drive bays, and the
frame holds a fan. That is how the disk drives in one of my
computers get cooled. It pulls cool air from the outside over
the drives. Another of my computers has a fan mounted in front
of one of the drive cages, which performs the same function.

Here is an example of a module for a coolermaster CMstacker case.
It consists of a fan plus HD cage. Some other cases fasten the
fan to the case, and the cage is removable.

http://www.i-tech.com.au/products/item5641.asp

The two enemies of the hard drive, are heat and moisture. The
allowed temperature drops with increased humidity. At 60% R.H. you
are allowed about 35C. (IBM or Hitachi disk OEM manuals have curves
for allowed environmental conditions.) Now, if I am to believe that,
then how do people in tropical countries use these drives ?

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/products/Deskstar_7K250
"Deskstar 7K250 Specification v1.5 (Serial ATA)" - PDF pg.35
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/tech...F3028F4486256D3D0065D995/$file/d7k250S_sp.pdf

Paul

 

[John Corliss]

Yeah Ive noticed 7200 drives get pretty hot. Thats why I always leave
some space between them. That seems like the minimum you should do.

I totally agree.

Most of the people I know as Ive mentioned and on my systems --- HDs
hardly ever fail physically that is.

I've now had a Maxtor fail after only three years and this most recent,
a Seagate, fail after only 8 months. Heat *must* have been a factor
involved in these failures.

But Ive been using cooling and
spacing them apart and most of PCs from people I know their systems
are modest so they only have one HD so there arent two or 3 of them
all crammed into a small space.

There are probablly all kinds of cooling systems but Ive only seen 3
main ones around here. One is particular to my style of Antec case.
Antec and maybe some others have 3.5 inch drive cages where you can
stick a standard 80mm fan in the front of the removable cage. So its
easy to face it in or out - blowing in or out. Ive only seen it on the
full tower Antec cases.

That is a good idea. I could fabricate a mount using a piece of sheet
metal and mount the fan directly behing the drives.

The others are the belly pan with two dinky fans. All these are 10
bucks or less at COMPUSA and many other places. I think they blow air
in though Im not 100% sure. You might be able to mount them in the
other direction. I cant remember how they are mounted but I assume
they are with screws. The problem with the belly pan is they take up
space.

Right. That's why I kind of ruled them out. I only currently have space
to mount two hard drives internally and that arrangement would take up
the space of one hard drive, limiting me to only one (although cooled)
hard drive.

On my system if I use the HDs in the 5.25 slots the belly pans
take up a fair amount of vertical space so that I cant space them the
way I normally do and it reduces the amount of drives I can install.

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=289662&pfp=BROWSE

The other popular one is the 5.25 slot faceplate that has two tiny
fans built in. I assume you can remount the fans outward to blow out
but I dont know. You can find those everywhere even Compusa.
http://www.casecooler.com/514slothardr.html

That is what I will be using in conjunction with the hard drive cooling
solution I come up with. It will help greatly to cool my DVD drives.

(clipped)
There are lots of variations Im sure - ones with heatsinks too that
cost way more and jackets with fan cooling etc. Theres those pull out
cases for the 5.25 slots like this with fan cooling

http://www.circotech.com/rm-133w.html

Heatsinks work best with a fan on them. The 5.25" pullouts would place a
drive directly between my DVD drives and heat them up more.

If you are a noise freak then Zalman makes one for the HD thats
noiseless but have no idea if it works.

http://www.casecooler.com/zahehadrco.html

The pipes are just heat sinks. I was reading a review on the unit and
one guy had to add a fan.

Heres another interesting one that takes up one whole drive slot

http://www.casecooler.com/lahadidrco.html

I was looking at one of those on the Newegg site. However, it's not as
effective with systems having two hard drives. As I mentioned in another
reply to this thread, I did find this setup:

http://proline.com/tech/stacker/index.htm

which I will be looking into.

Thanks very much for your reply.

 

[John Corliss]

If you look at this patent application, I don't think anything is
getting through that breather hole The breather hole is only
intended for pressure equilization, when barometric pressure changes.

http://www.wipo.int/ipdl/IPDL-CIMAGES/view/pct/getbykey5?KEY=01/14041.010301&ELEMENT_SET=DECL

Example of a commercial breather hole filter:
http://www.donaldson.com/en/diskdrive/support/datalibrary/000610.pdf

Also, from an IBM disk manual:

"Do not cover the breather hole! Covering the
breather hole may result in loss of data."

I still don't understand why the pressure is so significant. If
you take a computer to Boulder Colorado, the air inside the HDA is
going to get thinner, so big deal ? I wonder if flexure of the
cover is the problem ?

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/op/packAir.html

No matter how you move air over the disk, the air is a soup of
particles that are monstrous in size compared to the aperture on
the breather filter. A more dangerous situation, would be opening
a bottle of solvent next to the drive, as vapour phase is likely
to be a more effective poison than particulate (even if there is
a diffuser channel).

Wow! Thanks for all the clarification.

I built a frame that fits over three 5.25" drive bays, and the
frame holds a fan. That is how the disk drives in one of my
computers get cooled. It pulls cool air from the outside over
the drives. Another of my computers has a fan mounted in front
of one of the drive cages, which performs the same function.

Here is an example of a module for a coolermaster CMstacker case.
It consists of a fan plus HD cage. Some other cases fasten the
fan to the case, and the cage is removable.

http://www.i-tech.com.au/products/item5641.asp

Not sure how this would mount in my case.

The two enemies of the hard drive, are heat and moisture. The
allowed temperature drops with increased humidity. At 60% R.H. you
are allowed about 35C. (IBM or Hitachi disk OEM manuals have curves
for allowed environmental conditions.) Now, if I am to believe that,
then how do people in tropical countries use these drives ?

Air conditioning?

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/products/Deskstar_7K250
"Deskstar 7K250 Specification v1.5 (Serial ATA)" - PDF pg.35
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/tech...F3028F4486256D3D0065D995/$file/d7k250S_sp.pdf

Thanks for your reply, Paul.

 

[Alceryes]

My system is set up with two hard drives and I use XXCopy:

http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm

to clone one to the other on demand. I do *not* use RAID because I want
control over when a backup copy is made. Unfortunately, I recently fried
my main hard drive and had to send it back.

Yesterday, I received the replacement hard drive from Newegg.com and have
installed it. Since I've now gone through two secondary hard drives in
what I consider to be short order, it's time to figure out why this is
happening. Kony (my thanks to you!) and somebody else (sorry, I can't find
the thread now) suggested that I look into cooling the hard drives. This
makes a lot of sense to me because they're mounted right on top of one
another, and when I touch them after running the computer for a while,
they're both rather warm - bordering on HOT.

Time to cool those puppies.

I've been looking at various fan additions and what I really want to do is
to blow directly ONTO the hard drives in order to maximize heat removal.
This, however, will blow dust onto the hard drives and as Kony mentioned,
"while a drive is sealed, most have a filtered vent hole still." This
means that dust still has a way into the drive, although it's a difficult
path. Thus, I would think that it's better to suck air away from the
drives rather than blow onto them.

Mounting a hard drive in a fan unit that fits into a spare 5.25" bay is
not an option, because I want to cool both hard drives. However, I'm
thinking of additionally adding a 5.25" bay mounted case fan in the middle
bay (I have three) to cool my two DVD drives and provide additional case
ventilation.

But back to the hard drives, I'd like to find something that will mount so
as to suck the hot air right off of the hard drives and out of the case. I
would prefer not to use something that will suck the heat off of the hard
drives and distribute it into the case, but maybe that additional fan in
the 5.25" empty bay will render that concern of no consequence. Any
recommendations?

TIA

Easiest solution (if your case allows it) is to separate the drives (put one
drive space between them) and have an intake at the front of your system
sucking air in and blowing it across them. You can easily attach a filter
(bought or home-made) to prevent dust monsters from invading. As far as the
added warm air, if you have a couple of good exhaust fans it'll make little
or no difference and in fact might even keep your case cleaner if you had
negative pressure in there before the fan was added.

 

[Bob]

Easiest solution (if your case allows it) is to separate the drives (put one
drive space between them) and have an intake at the front of your system
sucking air in and blowing it across them.

That'll work but an even easier solution is to get Kingwin KF-23
removable drive bays. That model has 3 fans - and based on the MBM5
report, the drive stays cool.

Even when I beat up on it, like defrag, DVD Shrink, etc - things that
cause the CPU to heat up a lot - the drive stays cool, no higher than
45C at most. WD gives an operating range of 5 - 55C so my drives stay
well inside that range.

 

[Jon Danniken]

It still amazes me the way that my case's slide-in hard drive mounting
bracket stacks the hard drives so closely together. True stupidity on
the part of some engineer. For the time being I think I'll fabricate an
extension of some sort so that I can get some space between the two hard
drives.

Yep, using the stock hole you can really only mount one drive properly. The
trick is to remove the bracket and drill your own holes to permit two HDDs
to equally share the space too small for three. I did this to mine when I
installed a case fan on the end to blow air over them.

Jon

 

[John Corliss]

Yep, using the stock hole you can really only mount one drive properly. The
trick is to remove the bracket and drill your own holes to permit two HDDs
to equally share the space too small for three. I did this to mine when I
installed a case fan on the end to blow air over them.

Jon,
Sounds like a good idea. However, on my system there is only enough
room on the slid out hard drive rack to mount two hard drives no matter
what. I'm thinking of fabricating an extension of some sort though.
Also, I notice that the rack lacks holes for ventilation where it would
hurt nothing to have them.

Wish there was some way for me to post a picture of the setup.

I am looking into cutting a hole in the side panel right where the hard
drives are and then mounting another 80 mm fan in that hole.

 

[John Corliss]

Easiest solution (if your case allows it)

Unfortunately, this is not the situation. It's a very bad design.

is to separate the drives (put one
drive space between them) and have an intake at the front of your system
sucking air in and blowing it across them. You can easily attach a filter
(bought or home-made) to prevent dust monsters from invading. As far as the
added warm air, if you have a couple of good exhaust fans it'll make little
or no difference and in fact might even keep your case cleaner if you had
negative pressure in there before the fan was added.

As I just mentioned in another post, I'm thinking of fabricating an
extension of some sort though. Also, I notice that the rack lacks holes
for ventilation where it would hurt nothing to have them. I will drill
them in.

I am looking into cutting a hole in the side panel right where the hard
drives are and then mounting another 80 mm fan in that hole. It won't be
pretty, but it should do the job.

What I don't understand about my case is that there's some kind of
square plastic cage that's 3" deep by 4.25" tall by 3.5" wide and it's
located in the front at the bottom, snapped onto a ventilated metal
portion of the case. There is a sensor of some kind in the cage and it
has two wires going to it. I think this is supposed to be a housing for
an optional case fan that I foolishly didn't order with the system.
However, since the system is three years old and there's no manual for
the case I don't know for sure what the cage is for.

 

[kony]

On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 13:42:46 -0700, John Corliss

Unfortunately, this is not the situation. It's a very bad design.

A case can be set up to do that with no problems whatsoever.
I happen to have a couple that did no worse than any other
configuration. All it requires is a side-panel fan with
ample flow rate to not limit exhaust from both the
rear-upper quadrant and front-bottom. Actually a little
more than equalized so positive pressurization forces some
air out in other areas too. In fact it might even be
optimal for extreme overclocking.

The thing is, most cases are not set up with such a large
side fan(s), and it is not a good thing to do with a small
side fan or none at all. Generally it would require at
least two 92mm, one 120mm, or two loud 80mm fans in the side
panel.


Completely untrue.
Adding a filter that is even remotely effective at keeping
dust out of a system will substantially reduce the flow rate
in the system. It doesn't even come remotely close to being
offset by the dust accumulation unless you only consider one
running state for comparison- the temp at a moment _after_
having ran for several years in a very dusty/dirty
environment. That would be presuming system was never
cleaned. Ironically even then, the filtered system would be
hotter as we would then have to assume the filters weren't
cleaned either, if a person were so reckless to leave a box
running in dirty environment for several years between
maintenance intervals.

I'm not against filtered systems, my main-use system IS
filtered in fact, as well as others and the filters do
always cut flow rate a lot except in an otherwise very poor
case where there was so much impedance to flow that the
filter state was a minor %

As I just mentioned in another post, I'm thinking of fabricating an
extension of some sort though. Also, I notice that the rack lacks holes
for ventilation where it would hurt nothing to have them. I will drill
them in.

Holes where, in the sides?
You may not benefit much from holes in the sides unless the
rack is rotated such that the long-side of the drive is
parallel with the front wall of the case, ie- rotated 90'
from how they're normally situated. Adding holes to the
typical configuration just allows more air to escape or be
slowed down traveling through the racks instead of maximum
flow across the drive surfaces. Since your case is 3 years
old it's not likely your drives are rotated 90' as mentioned
above.

I am looking into cutting a hole in the side panel right where the hard
drives are and then mounting another 80 mm fan in that hole. It won't be
pretty, but it should do the job.

Why? What case? That may have less benefit than you think.
The typical solution, to have large passive intake vent or a
fan, in front of the whole rack such that the vast majority
of case intake is pulled through that rack, is quite
sufficient for cooling the drives. While they need airflow
for cooling, they are not hard to cool given some space
between each in the rack.

What I don't understand about my case is that there's some kind of
square plastic cage that's 3" deep by 4.25" tall by 3.5" wide and it's
located in the front at the bottom, snapped onto a ventilated metal
portion of the case. There is a sensor of some kind in the cage and it
has two wires going to it. I think this is supposed to be a housing for
an optional case fan that I foolishly didn't order with the system.

Standard front-case fan configuration, and the "sensor" is a
speaker, perhaps better called a buzzer since it's tonal
range is rather small. If your motherboard has an integral
speaker, you don't need it.

However, since the system is three years old and there's no manual for
the case I don't know for sure what the cage is for.

Fan holder. It may also have slots in it, that "could" be
used to support the ends of full-length cards... at least
some of them used to have such slots, if/when the case was
the right length, and that is why the cage was so deep in
such cases, to match where a full-length card would end.
That doesn't necessarily mean it coincides to that length in
your case, the manufacturer may've simply spec'd one fan
frame that does serve this purpose in one or more cases but
used same part in other cases as well.

 

[John Corliss]

John Corliss wrote:



A case can be set up to do that with no problems whatsoever.
I happen to have a couple that did no worse than any other
configuration. All it requires is a side-panel fan with
ample flow rate to not limit exhaust from both the
rear-upper quadrant and front-bottom. Actually a little
more than equalized so positive pressurization forces some
air out in other areas too. In fact it might even be
optimal for extreme overclocking.

The thing is, most cases are not set up with such a large
side fan(s), and it is not a good thing to do with a small
side fan or none at all. Generally it would require at
least two 92mm, one 120mm, or two loud 80mm fans in the side
panel.


Completely untrue.
Adding a filter that is even remotely effective at keeping
dust out of a system will substantially reduce the flow rate
in the system. It doesn't even come remotely close to being
offset by the dust accumulation unless you only consider one
running state for comparison- the temp at a moment _after_
having ran for several years in a very dusty/dirty
environment. That would be presuming system was never
cleaned. Ironically even then, the filtered system would be
hotter as we would then have to assume the filters weren't
cleaned either, if a person were so reckless to leave a box
running in dirty environment for several years between
maintenance intervals.

I'm not against filtered systems, my main-use system IS
filtered in fact, as well as others and the filters do
always cut flow rate a lot except in an otherwise very poor
case where there was so much impedance to flow that the
filter state was a minor %


Holes where, in the sides?

Yes, and they would be directly in line with the fan I install so as to
facilitate air flow over the hard drives.

You may not benefit much from holes in the sides unless the
rack is rotated such that the long-side of the drive is
parallel with the front wall of the case, ie- rotated 90'
from how they're normally situated. Adding holes to the
typical configuration just allows more air to escape or be
slowed down traveling through the racks instead of maximum
flow across the drive surfaces. Since your case is 3 years
old it's not likely your drives are rotated 90' as mentioned
above.

Cables go into the part of the drive facing the back of the case.
They're not rotated.

Why? What case?

Sorry, not sure what you mean by "what case?". In any event, I was
referring to cutting a hole in the tower's side panel directly in line
with the location of the hard drives.

That may have less benefit than you think.

Not if the fan is one inch or less from and blowing directly across the
hard drives, as will be the situation with my setup. Additional exhaust
from the case will be assisted by a triple fan setup in the one
remaining 5.25" bay. Operational temp range for the Seagate is 0° to
60°C (32° to 140°F). For the Deskstar, it's 5 to 55° C (41° to 131°F).

The typical solution, to have large passive intake vent or a
fan, in front of the whole rack such that the vast majority
of case intake is pulled through that rack, is quite
sufficient for cooling the drives.

There are vent holes in front of the drives in my case behind the
faceplate. However, obviously they're not doing the job adequately.

While they need airflow
for cooling, they are not hard to cool given some space
between each in the rack.

And therein lies my problem. That plastic cage I described is situated
directly below the hard drives in the front of the case and restricts
the amount I can lower the bottom-most drive to only an additional inch.
However, that should be sufficient to improve airflow. That lowering
will be accomplished by fabirication of an extension to the hard drive
cage. I don't know *why* it was built so that the drives are mounted
only 1/8" apart. As I said in another post, it's just bad engineering on
somebody's part.

Standard front-case fan configuration, and the "sensor" is a
speaker, perhaps better called a buzzer since it's tonal
range is rather small. If your motherboard has an integral
speaker, you don't need it.

I'll be hornswoggled. Thanks for the explanation. However, I don't see
how a fan would need it. The rear fan is attached directly to the metal
back of the case and I see no reason why the front one would need that
plastic cage around it.

Fan holder. It may also have slots in it, that "could" be
used to support the ends of full-length cards... at least
some of them used to have such slots, if/when the case was
the right length, and that is why the cage was so deep in
such cases, to match where a full-length card would end.
That doesn't necessarily mean it coincides to that length in
your case, the manufacturer may've simply spec'd one fan
frame that does serve this purpose in one or more cases but
used same part in other cases as well.

My intention is not to mount a fan in it though. Since heat rises *and*
since I want additional cooling of my DVD drives, this unit or one like
it looks to be what I want for that purpose:

http://www.casecooler.com/514slothardr.html

As for cooling the hard drives, either my idea (side cover mounted fan
and additional holes in hard drive or this unit:


http://proline.com/tech/stacker/

will work. The Stacker unit though, would place the drives too far to
the rear unless I remove the plactic fan cage.

For the time being, I'm running my system with the side cover off and a
desk fan blowing on it lightly. Monitored temps are definitely lower.

 

[kony]

Sorry, not sure what you mean by "what case?". In any event, I was
referring to cutting a hole in the tower's side panel directly in line
with the location of the hard drives.

I mean, what computer system case is this you are referring
to?

The typical case does not need holes in the sides of the
rack nor a fan pointed at it. Usually it is only necessary
to have ample intake area in front of the rack. "Typical"
and "usually" are of course not always true, there are some
odd cases out there. Installing such a side-panel fan also
has a liklihood to have a very high noise to flow (flow
actually through the rack itself) ratio.

Not if the fan is one inch or less from and blowing directly across the
hard drives, as will be the situation with my setup.

That's partly why it's such a noisey alternative. Holes are
but a minor flow, the typical front-mounted fan is bound to
move more air through the inside of the drive rack, enough
to make a side-fan in that location a bit redundant and
unnecessary with a fan fan in place. Since we don't know
the particulars of the case, that could vary if it were an
unusual design.

Additional exhaust
from the case will be assisted by a triple fan setup in the one
remaining 5.25" bay.

Those also tend to be noisey unless undervolted, and often
short-lived if only 10mm thick fans.

Operational temp range for the Seagate is 0° to
60°C (32° to 140°F). For the Deskstar, it's 5 to 55° C (41° to 131°F).

Ok, but I wouldn't count on those for optimal lifespan as
the measurement ability of the drive depends on only a
measurement of one point inside one chip.

There are vent holes in front of the drives in my case behind the
faceplate. However, obviously they're not doing the job adequately.

That is far too common a problem, with the ideal being to
cut out a larger area before building into the case. I can
see that some people might prefer to add a hole to side
panel if the system were already built, to avoid having to
disassemble it to control and remove metal particles formed
during cutting or drilling, though if you're going to be
drilling into the rack anyway you aren't necessarily
avoiding this situation.

And therein lies my problem. That plastic cage I described is situated
directly below the hard drives in the front of the case and restricts
the amount I can lower the bottom-most drive to only an additional inch.

The cage just snaps in... might have a screw or two holding
it. There's no reason to leave it in if you aren't putting
a fan into it or using the speaker. Actually even if you
wanted a fan in that location it would do better to cut out
the appropriate sized hole into the case front wall. That
will tend to increase flow from such a fan by quite a bit.

However, that should be sufficient to improve airflow. That lowering
will be accomplished by fabirication of an extension to the hard drive
cage. I don't know *why* it was built so that the drives are mounted
only 1/8" apart. As I said in another post, it's just bad engineering on
somebody's part.

It was engineered to provide the most drive positions on
it's paper spec without using more metal. It was also most
likely designed during an era when drives didn't produce as
much heat. Case manufacturers really don't care much about
how well their case cools, even when they add fans they do
so more as a *selling point* kind of feature towards
marketing, rather than an engineered solution for more
cooling. Apathy on their part, they don't care if your
parts bake.

I'll be hornswoggled. Thanks for the explanation. However, I don't see
how a fan would need it. The rear fan is attached directly to the metal
back of the case and I see no reason why the front one would need that
plastic cage around it.

Rear fan can be attached with side-panel off, front fan
would require pulling off front bezel too which is more
work. Plus it incorporated the card-edge slots (usually),
and held the speaker. It was just a cheap multifunction
bracket that isn't used as often today because it was
sub-optimal for fans, and of course it costs more to have it
than omit it in a design.

My intention is not to mount a fan in it though. Since heat rises *and*
since I want additional cooling of my DVD drives, this unit or one like
it looks to be what I want for that purpose:

The ideal would be to cut out a 92mm fan hole behind it, and
add another 4 position drive bay to the case right behind
it. 4 position so you can space out the drives. It's
possible to fab your own bay out of metal sheeting, but if
you're not used to doing metalwork it's probably not time or
cost-effective.

http://www.casecooler.com/514slothardr.html

As for cooling the hard drives, either my idea (side cover mounted fan
and additional holes in hard drive or this unit:

Above linked fan bay cooler is better than some because it
has the 25mm thick fans instead of 10-15mm. Even so, they
show 6500 RPM per fan, it's going to be a little loud. I
suggest undervolting it quite a bit, 7V or lower. That will
also improve it's lifespan.

http://proline.com/tech/stacker/

will work. The Stacker unit though, would place the drives too far to
the rear unless I remove the plactic fan cage.

For the time being, I'm running my system with the side cover off and a
desk fan blowing on it lightly. Monitored temps are definitely lower.

The stacker also uses less effective thin fans. The
time-tested ideal is still to have a 80+mm fan mounted in
front of the drive bay. If your bay is short and doesnt'
allow the fan frame internal to the metal wall of the
chassis, it might be possible to mount it externally behind
the front bezel, if the bezel is deep enough. I wouldn't go
below 15-20mm thick fans towards that end though.

It's not that the other various cooling solutions won't
work, but they do tend to be noisier and shorter-lived.