(PeteCresswell) said:
The drive in question is in a MicroATX box and it's consistently
hitting high forties/low fifties C. Actually it's a Vista box,
but microsoft.public.vista.general seems tb overrun with crank
posts so - figuring OS is probably moot - I'm posting here.
I've pulled the cover, verified fans are running, no dust
accumulation.
I cannot say with absolute certainty that it hasn't always been
that way - but I think I could have noticed bc my indicator is
Hard Disk Sentinel, whose icon changes from green to yellow to
red as the temp rises and I think I would have noticed right
away.
Takes an hour or two to rise from 33 degrees startup temp to
approximate 50.
I can make it happen just by telling the user to boot up the PC
and leave it alone - i.e. no disk activity.
Anybody have any ideas?
So you have some info to work with.
"It takes an hour or two to rise..."
Is the thermal mass of the drive so large, it takes that long ?
Maybe the case temperature rises over time, and there are
actually two temperature curves at work, at the same time.
Maybe the area around the computer gets hot, such as a PC
stuffed in a cabinet. That might extend the time for the
system to get in trouble.
You'd think if the thermal dissipation of the drive
was sufficient to hit that temp, it would be able to do
it in 10 to 15 minutes.
When running HDTune benchmark, I can see a small temperature rise,
but it doesn't take quite that long for it to appear. You can use
the "error scan" function, if you need a long term (read-only)
stimulus.
If you collect temperature versus time data, and assuming the power
level of the drive is constant, you should get an exponential related
("RC time constant") shaped curve, and be able to extrapolate what
temperature it will eventually hit. If several time constants are
involved, the curve might not be very distinct (i.e. case heats
up, room heats up, each with its own time constant).
For many people, the cause of this, is the fact the drive gets
no cooling air.
My drives received forced air, coming from the front of the case.
There is an actual fan in front of the drive trays (added by me).
It's pretty hard for the drive temp to rise, when there is
forced air at room temp, flowing over them. The drives in fact,
receive the best cooling, of any component in the PC.
I can still see a temperature rise, when running HDTune, but the
magnitude of the rise is pretty small.
Some drives, historically, had a high operating temp. At one
time, the "power footprint" of small SCSI drives, was in the
40 watt range. Such drives were provided with drive coolers
consisting of three fans mounted sideways (blowing across
the drive). Modern drives are nowhere near as bad as that,
with some drives getting down to the 5 to 6 watt level.
If you can hit 50C, with a decent room temp, on a five to
six watt drive, the air in there must be very still and
stagnant. Try popping off the tray cover in front of the
drive. Whether the airflow ends up entering or exiting
through the hole, who knows, the drive temp might drop.
I've also had computer cases, where the case had a fan
mounting point next to the drive. But due to lack of
attention to details by the computer case designer, the
airflow from such a scheme might not make a lot of difference.
For example, due to the impact of other fans in the computer
case (a "multi-fan" cooling setup), I've actually had air
forced *backwards* through one of those drive cooler fans.
It takes a fair amount of care, when selecting and installing
fans, to get good net airflow where you want it. Having many
many fans in the case, and air vents all over the place, can
make it difficult to predict what will happen.
By holding a tissue near the vents, you can see whether the
net airflow via the vent, is in or out. That's how I detected
the issue on that machine. The tissue wouldn't "seat" onto the vent,
when held outside the machine. Air was flowing backwards
through the fan, even though the fan blade was supposed to be
moving the air in the other direction.
Paul
