Disk Drive temps.

[barrygordon]

What are normal temperature ranges for disk drives. I am using Hitachi 2TB 7500 RPM units.

 

When spun up their temperatures float at about 33-34 decgrees C. After being spun down for a while and then spun up their temps are around 30 degrees C.  The room ambient is about 24 degrees C.

 

Are these disk temperatures reasonable?

[NAS]

There is almost a religious debate on drive temps. Historically everyone said colder is better but after google done their massive HDD review and concluded roughly "actually it better if they run a bit hotter" things started to change... slightly.

 

My personal rule of thumb is anything beginning with 3 is good. Low 4 is ok... 43+ is getting a bit dodgy and 5+ is BAD.

 

Some people will disagree with my sentiments on high 3 and low 4 but regardless you are fine

[terrastrife]

its qutie impossible to keep it in low 40's depending where you live, but eithe rway, keep it below 60C, most will hit shutdown somewhere around there.

[NAS]

Unless i am mistaken some drives go out of warranty 50-55. You should consider that when running that hot.

 

Its never impossible to keep them in the 40s but agreed that sometimes it is noisy and expensive.

 

Always remember though all drives break and as long as you have parity unless more than one drive breaks at one time you are fine

 

You can easily get obsessed about this and inmost instances it is pointless

[terrastrife]

a 2tb 7k2000 in open air (i mean open air) with no flow will hit and stay around 30-35C over ambient.

 

and when ambient temps reach 35-40C here, low 40's is out of the question.

[NAS]

As i said "noisy and expensive". Active cooling.

 

Obviously there are scenarios where ambient temp, cabinet, case and drive selection will cause drives to go out of temperature warranty. If you decide to let it happen its a personal choice. this is not the same as impossible to cool though.

[Rajahal]

My magic number is 45 C, which gives me enough of a buffer against 50 C to avoid the risk of cooking my drives (and voiding warranties).  I'm happy with anything under 45, though the 30s is the ideal range.

 

I also have a 80 mm intake fan on my case that I only turn on in the dead heat of summer (about 1-2 months).  The rest of the year I leave it unplugged.  Works well for my area, and for my AC-less house.

[queeg]

I use 40c as the upper limit of what I shoot for.  If it goes over a bit for short time maybe ok.  Try to avoid wide swiings.  Like being in the 20's when spun down and 30's when a single drive is accessed but then 50's for the group when doing parity sync.  

I'm in the northwest and almost nobody has AC here.  We only need it for a month in the summer when temps get above 80F.  My drives hover at 32c to 34c now and my fans are all running at half speed.  

[Msan]

Right now none of my disks go over 37c when doing a parity sync..

[barrygordon]

I live on the East coast of FL a little south of Daytona. Temperatures get quite high (90's in the summer), Electrical storms are frequent, and power outages from momentary glitches lasting 1-2 seconds to occasions where it is out for a few hours, often occur.  I won't discuss Hurricanes. 

 

When my late wife and I designed the house we dedicated a small room to be a "winter stuff" closet and my Electronics room.  That room now has its own HVAC seperate from the house which keeps the room at 73 degrees F.  It could probably keep it at 62 degrees if I set it for that. At one point in my career I designed main frame computer centers so the design of the house for HVAC, power and grounding is probably a bit of overkill.

[MortenSchmidt]

There is almost a religious debate on drive temps. Historically everyone said colder is better but after google done their massive HDD review and concluded roughly "actually it better if they run a bit hotter" things started to change... slightly.

 

Just keep one thing in mind about the Google study - their drives never spin down. If you do spin down your drives, you are getting thermal cycling. The greater the delta between spun-down and active temperature, the more stress is induced due to thermal expansion and contraction. Just something to keep in mind.