Hard Drive Temperature

[Nehmo]

Yesterday I came to the machine, which is always on, but when idle, cuts
off the monitor, and nothing would happen (nothing would display) when
I used the mouse or keyboard. The first two attempted reboots didn't get
Windows to load, but on the third, Windows started the system performed
normally. Since then, everything seems to be okay, and I can reboot
without a problem. I'm not sure what happened, but I *did* increase the
size of the pagefile yesterday, and I postponed the necessary reboot.

The case is open and I can touch the hard drives. Yesterday during and
after the failure, they all *felt* to be hotter than they should be. I
have two Western Digitals and a Seagate. Looking at the HD mfg sites, I
learned a modern HDs can operate up to 60 degrees C. I got this utility,
SIGuardian v 1.7 trial
http://www.siguardian.com/products/siguardian/index.html , to get the
temperature and it shows the temperature of the drives, but it
misidentifies all my drives as being Seagate. This makes me suspect that
the temp reading provided by the app may be incorrect too.

Today, SIGuardian shows all the drives at 34 C. Yesterday, when I looked
just after the event, they were almost at 50 C. Perplexing.

Can I trust the temp values given by SIGuardian even though it
incorrectly identifies the manufacturers of the HDs?
Is there another utility to monitor the HD temps?
Or is there a direct way through Windows to see the temp of the HDs?

Shuttle AN35N Ultra V1.1, AMD Athlon XP 2800+
Windows XP Home SP1
Drive #1 - WDC WD16 00JB-00GVA0 SCSI Disk Device (149 GB)
Drive #2 - ST312002 6A SCSI Disk Device (111 GB), System and Boot Drive
Drive #3 - WDC WD80 0JB-00ETA0 SCSI Disk Device (74 GB)

 

[steve]

Temperature isn't the problem. 50C is quite cool.

How about power options? I seen a situation when powering of has
failed to complete so nothing helps other that reset or unplugging the
mains.

 

[Mxsmanic]

My guess is that a software bug or malware locked your system into
some sort of loop that included disk I/O. Rather than worry about the
disk drives, which most likely survived without injury, you should try
to discover what locked up the system in the first place, as it may
happen again, unless some very unusual set of circumstances came
together to cause it.

You can use something like smartctl to run tests on the drives and
check results to make sure they are still running okay (it will also
give you their operating temperatures).

 

[Rod Speed]

Yesterday I came to the machine, which is always on, but when
idle, cuts off the monitor, and nothing would happen (nothing would
display) when I used the mouse or keyboard. The first two attempted
reboots didn't get Windows to load, but on the third, Windows started
the system performed normally. Since then, everything seems to be
okay, and I can reboot without a problem. I'm not sure what happened,

What exactly happened with the failed reboots ?

but I *did* increase the size of the pagefile yesterday,

Generally not a good idea to have a fixed sized one.

and I postponed the necessary reboot.

Not sure what you mean by that.

The case is open and I can touch the hard drives. Yesterday
during and after the failure, they all *felt* to be hotter than
they should be. I have two Western Digitals and a Seagate.

Likely all mounted adjacent with no space between them.

Drives do get pretty hot when installed like that.

Looking at the HD mfg sites, I learned a modern
HDs can operate up to 60 degrees C.

I wouldnt run them at that temp for long myself.

I got this utility, SIGuardian v 1.7 trial
http://www.siguardian.com/products/siguardian/index.html ,
to get the temperature and it shows the temperature of the
drives, but it misidentifies all my drives as being Seagate.

Everest should report the temps and drives properly.
http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=1&lang=en

This makes me suspect that the temp reading
provided by the app may be incorrect too.

Today, SIGuardian shows all the drives at 34 C. Yesterday, when
I looked just after the event, they were almost at 50 C. Perplexing.

The room temp can make a surprising difference with all the drives
stacked on top of each other without much airflow over the drives.

Can I trust the temp values given by SIGuardian even
though it incorrectly identifies the manufacturers of the HDs?

I wouldnt.

Is there another utility to monitor the HD temps?

Yes, plenty, I like Everest.

 

[Peter]

Is there another utility to monitor the HD temps?

http://www.passmark.com/ftp/diskcheckup.zip

 

[Bob]

Temperature isn't the problem. 50C is quite cool.

Not true. For a HD 50C is too close to the max 55C that WD specs.

 

[Bob]

My guess is that a software bug or malware locked your system into
some sort of loop that included disk I/O. Rather than worry about the
disk drives, which most likely survived without injury, you should try
to discover what locked up the system in the first place, as it may
happen again, unless some very unusual set of circumstances came
together to cause it.

You can use something like smartctl to run tests on the drives and
check results to make sure they are still running okay (it will also
give you their operating temperatures).

Open Task Manager and look at the process table for the CPU hog.

Keep TM reduced in the tray and watch the green graphic to see when
CPU usage is high.

 

[Nehmo]

- Rod Speed -

What exactly happened with the failed reboots ?

- Nehmo -
Hi again, Ron! It went all the way through to the point just before when
the initial Windows XP screen usually displays, but it didn't, and the
screen remained blank. I waited a while, then tried again.

- Rod Speed -

Generally not a good idea to have a fixed sized one.

- Nehmo -
Control Panel > System > Advanced Tab > Performance Settings > Advanced
tab > Virtual memory > Change > The options are Custom size, System
managed size, and No paging file. On the bottom of that tab it
recommends 2302 MB. Mine was less, so I increased Maximum size to 2502
and Initial size to 2302 MB. Should I have gone with System managed
size?

- Rod Speed -

Not sure what you mean by that.

- Nehmo -
A message came up that said I would have to reboot for the changes to
take effect and gave the option to do so now; I declined.

- Rod Speed -

Likely all [the hard drives] mounted adjacent with no space between

them.

- Nehmo -
With this case, MGE Gamer M1
http://www.moddershq.net/reviews.asp?reviewid=35 , one cm of airspace
in-between them.

- Rod Speed –

Everest should report the temps and drives properly.
http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=1&lang=en

- Nehmo -
I have that app. I didn't think it did temps. I had been looking under
the wrong section. It's under Computer > Sensor I now discovered.

- Rod Speed –

Yes, plenty, I like Everest.

- Nehmo -
Now that I see what Everest shows, it seems to be giving the same
readings as SIGuardian.
From Everest:
Computer > Sensor:

Temperatures
Motherboard 24 °C (75 °F)
CPU 31 °C (88 °F)
PWM 29 °C (84 °F)
ST3120026A 33 °C (91 °F)
ST3120026A 36 °C (97 °F)
ST3120026A 33 °C (91 °F)

But under
Storage > Physical Drives:

Drive #1 - WDC WD16 00JB-00GVA0 SCSI Disk Device (149 GB)
Drive #2 - ST312002 6A SCSI Disk Device (111 GB)
Drive #3 - WDC WD80 0JB-00ETA0 SCSI Disk Device (74 GB)

Odd. The temp section gives the same Seagate id number for all the
drives, but under storage, they’re different.

 

[John McGaw]

Yesterday I came to the machine, which is always on, but when idle, cuts snip...
http://www.siguardian.com/products/siguardian/index.html , to get the
temperature and it shows the temperature of the drives, but it
misidentifies all my drives as being Seagate. This makes me suspect that
the temp reading provided by the app may be incorrect too.

snip...

If the software misidentifies the drives it MAY be getting the
temperatures right. Then again it might be confused about them too. I'd
suggest that you give a different utility a shot. One easy and useful
one is Everest Home.

http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=1&lang=en

It is completely free and seems to get all my drives right on various
systems no matter how bizarre the configuration. Then again it may not
read the CPU and other temperatures exactly right. Or so other Shuttle
users have reported. On my SB65G2 it crosses up the temperatures of the
CPU and PWM.

But I'm curious, how did you manage to get THREE HDs into a Shuttle?
Mine has space for one or two (if I get rid of the floppy/flash reader),
but three would mean sacrificing the optical drive too.

 

[Rod Speed]

- Rod Speed -

- Nehmo -
Hi again, Ron! It went all the way through to the point just before
when the initial Windows XP screen usually displays, but it didn't,
and the screen remained blank. I waited a while, then tried again.

OK, that usually happens when one of the
drivers cant setup the hardware its controlling.

You should be able to see which hardware it is by turning the
log on in the menu where you elect to start in safe mode.

- Rod Speed -

- Nehmo -
Control Panel > System > Advanced Tab > Performance Settings >
Advanced tab > Virtual memory > Change > The options are Custom
size, System managed size, and No paging file. On the bottom of that
tab it recommends 2302 MB. Mine was less, so I increased Maximum size
to 2502 and Initial size to 2302 MB. Should I have gone with System
managed size?

Yes. But its unlikely to be the problem.

- Rod Speed -

- Nehmo -
A message came up that said I would have to reboot for the
changes to take effect and gave the option to do so now; I declined.

OK, that just means that the new size wont be used till the next reboot.

- Rod Speed -

Likely all [the hard drives] mounted adjacent
with no space between them.

- Nehmo -
With this case, MGE Gamer M1
http://www.moddershq.net/reviews.asp?reviewid=35 , one cm of airspace
in-between them.

- Rod Speed –

- Nehmo -
I have that app. I didn't think it did temps. I had been looking under
the wrong section. It's under Computer > Sensor I now discovered.

- Rod Speed –

- Nehmo -
Now that I see what Everest shows, it seems
to be giving the same readings as SIGuardian.
From Everest:
Computer > Sensor:

Temperatures
Motherboard 24 °C (75 °F)
CPU 31 °C (88 °F)
PWM 29 °C (84 °F)
ST3120026A 33 °C (91 °F)
ST3120026A 36 °C (97 °F)
ST3120026A 33 °C (91 °F)

Those numbers are all fine.

Odd, must be some reason the hard drive controller stops
the software from seeing the drive ID properly in that situation.

But under
Storage > Physical Drives:

Drive #1 - WDC WD16 00JB-00GVA0 SCSI Disk Device (149 GB)
Drive #2 - ST312002 6A SCSI Disk Device (111 GB)
Drive #3 - WDC WD80 0JB-00ETA0 SCSI Disk Device (74 GB)

Odd. The temp section gives the same Seagate id number
for all the drives, but under storage, they’re different.

Yeah, likely due to the SCSI controller.

Looks like one bit of flakey hardware is the reason for the
reboot failures. The log should tell you which hardware it is.

 

[Nehmo]

- John McGaw -

But I'm curious, how did you manage to get THREE HDs into a Shuttle?
Mine has space for one or two (if I get rid of the floppy/flash reader),
but three would mean sacrificing the optical drive too.

- Nehmo -
The Shuttle AN35N Ultra board
http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?id=215 has 2 ATA connectors,
and supports 4 devices. I have 2 HDs on one cable, and 1 HD and the
Optical on the other.

I don't have a Shuttle case, if that's what you mean. See:
http://img192.imageshack.us/my.php?image=boxopen7lv.jpg

 

[kony]

recommends 2302 MB. Mine was less, so I increased Maximum size to 2502
and Initial size to 2302 MB. Should I have gone with System managed
size?

WIndows recommendation is logically broken, the more memory
a box has the lower the size needs be.

The ideal here is to gauge the largest your pagefile ever
gets to be, and assigning it a fixed minimum that is
slightly larger than that. One random suggestion might be
512MB-1GB, perhaps large if you do some REALLY big jobs on
the system but if you do, you know it already, and probably
also know that you need more physical memory so there was
never a time you exceeded that 512MB initial figure in
actual utilization rather than mere allocation.

This is with the drive defragged so it is (as much as
possible) contiguous space. Set the maximum FAR above any
realistic figure beacause that is only a upper boundary you
never want to reach, like almost all of the remaining free
space on that HDD parititon.

 

[Ed >:-) \Archive\]

My guess is that a software bug or malware locked your system into
some sort of loop that included disk I/O. Rather than worry about the
disk drives, which most likely survived without injury, you should try
to discover what locked up the system in the first place, as it may
happen again, unless some very unusual set of circumstances came
together to cause it.

You can use something like smartctl to run tests on the drives and
check results to make sure they are still running okay (it will also
give you their operating temperatures).

I think you'll find in time it's more likely windows ****ing things up
by trying to go into hybernation mode or the like and stalling as it
is commonly know to do.

 

[Andy]

Yesterday I came to the machine, which is always on, but when idle, cuts
off the monitor, and nothing would happen (nothing would display) when
I used the mouse or keyboard. The first two attempted reboots didn't get
Windows to load, but on the third, Windows started the system performed
normally. Since then, everything seems to be okay, and I can reboot
without a problem. I'm not sure what happened, but I *did* increase the
size of the pagefile yesterday, and I postponed the necessary reboot.

The case is open and I can touch the hard drives. Yesterday during and
after the failure, they all *felt* to be hotter than they should be. I
have two Western Digitals and a Seagate. Looking at the HD mfg sites, I
learned a modern HDs can operate up to 60 degrees C. I got this utility,
SIGuardian v 1.7 trial
http://www.siguardian.com/products/siguardian/index.html , to get the
temperature and it shows the temperature of the drives, but it
misidentifies all my drives as being Seagate. This makes me suspect that
the temp reading provided by the app may be incorrect too.

Today, SIGuardian shows all the drives at 34 C. Yesterday, when I looked
just after the event, they were almost at 50 C. Perplexing.

Can I trust the temp values given by SIGuardian even though it
incorrectly identifies the manufacturers of the HDs?
Is there another utility to monitor the HD temps?

I use Motherboard Monitor (MBM 5) and am pleased with it.

Andy

 

[Mxsmanic]

I use Motherboard Monitor (MBM 5) and am pleased with it.

How does MBM know the temperature of disk drives?

 

[louise]

I think you'll find in time it's more likely windows ****ing things up
by trying to go into hybernation mode or the like and stalling as it
is commonly know to do.

I use Everest Home and it works quite well

Louise

 

[Rod Speed]

Andy writes

How does MBM know the temperature of disk drives?

It uses the SMART temperature with hard drives.

 

[Andy]

Good question. I've recently had the motherboard changed from a GigaByte to
a Foxconn K7S741MG-6L / K7S741GXMG-6L. Since then, Sensors 2 and 3 of MBM
5, to my susprise, report the names and temperatures of both HDDs. This
didn't happen with the GigaByte board. That's all I know. MBM 5 is available
from http://mbm.livewiredev.com/.

Andy

 

[Mxsmanic]

It uses the SMART temperature with hard drives.

How do I configure it? I have MBM 5.

 

[Peter]

How does MBM know the temperature of disk drives?

How do I configure it? I have MBM 5.

First check if your HD support SMART:
http://www.passmark.com/ftp/diskcheckup.zip