Hey,

I recently bought and shucked 2-22TB Seagate Expansion external hard drives. Inside were ST22000DM000 drives. I replaced 2 of my 8TB WDC_WD80EFPX drives. I've noticed that the new drives run much hotter than the 8TBs. The original drives would idle around 93°F and move up to 105°F under high loads. The new Seagate drives seem to be running at idle at 110°F and raising up to 115-117°F under heavy load.

It seems like through reading the consensus is to keep drives under 45°C/113°F. The case (Antec P101S) and cooling, even the drive locations are all the same. So with all that being the same, it is obviously the drive that seems to just run hotter due to different construction.

I guess my ultimate question is should I assume that the temps are still safe, or do I need to plan on further upgrades to increase cooling? Or should I adjust the warning temps higher to accommodate?

Thanks for any input.

For real spinning drives you should leave the warning temps as they are on default (for SSDs they can be much higher).

So you will have to think about how to improve your cooling.

(BTW, its not uncommon that larger drives get hotter, there is more mass to spin around and so there is more energy needed which results in higher temperatures)

Remember that drives that are stacked tightly even heat up each other. Maybe you can move around them, leaving empty slots between them?

Or, sometimes it is also helpful if you reseat all drives by placing SSDs between the real drives (2.5" SSDs give more room for air flow in 3.5" cages) (HDD-SSD-HDD-SSD... and so on)

There is no general solution, you have to see what works best for you.

Edited December 11, 2025Dec 11 by MAM59