I just got a new 26tb Seagate Expansion to backup my Unraid Media share. BestBuy has a sale going on for that unit. I formatted the drive and have it connected through Unassigned Devices. Pretty shortly after it was connected (before I started any data transfer) the temperature of the drive rose to about 46 degrees C. It has been copying data for about an hour and it is currently at 52C (it has gone up about a degree every 10-15 minutes). I can't find anything specific to operating temps for this drive but I did find something on Seagate's website that looks like it applies to internal drives that normal operating temps are 5-50 but newer model drives have a maximum temp of 60 degrees.

Do I need to worry about this? I bumped up the critical temp for the drive in Unraid to 57. I've only copied about 300gb and I want to copy close to 20tb of data. I don't know if it is going to keep rising or if it will eventually settle in somewhere. Once the data is copied it would be disconnected and stored somewhere perhaps only adding new media to it every 3-6 months. Do you think this drive will suffice or is the fact that it is running so hot a concern for a backup and that I should return it? Also if the drive exceeds the critical temp in Unraid will it simply stop the transfer and unmount the drive?

Thanks for the thoughts.

It's not great, but it's difficult to keep an external drive cool.

Thanks for the thoughts. My first file transfer finished at 55 but probably would have kept climbing if it was longer. It then came down to 50 and idled there throughout the night.

This morning I got a small fan and put it angled next to the drive. Within 30 minutes it has brought the idle temp down to 34. I'm going to try and do another transfer with the fan blowing on it and see how hot it gets.

If the fan can keep the temps reasonable I guess I will just plan on using a fan whenever I need to move data from or to this drive. Not ideal but not a huge deal since I won't be doing frequent transfers and it was a great price for a large backup drive.

Disks typically report 60C as the max temp, but IMHO anything above 45C should be avoided, 50C tops, or the disk may not last as long. A small fan on it, should do the job.

15 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Disks typically report 60C as the max temp, but IMHO anything above 45C should be avoided, 50C tops, or the disk may not last as long. A small fan on it, should do the job.

Got it. The fan is making a huge difference. Almost finisehd doing another 1tb transfer and the temp hasn't gone over 34 during it. Thanks.