What is optimal hard drive temperture?


ohlwiler

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General airflow imho definitely contributes a lot. I use two 80mm fans at 5 volts to cool my 4 drives (5000-something RPM) in unRAID and their temperatures range between 33 to 38 °C when in use (depending on load and ambient temperature, although the latter doesn't change much due to aircon). The server does not have any other fans at all because the CPU is passively cooled. There was one occurrence when I forgot to plug in the power for the server's HDD fans. It was rebuilding parity at the time. When I checked the status about 2-3 hours later I saw that the disks reported 57°C. :o

 

Now in my desktop computer I have two 7200 RPM drives (also stacked together); there is no additional cooling for them and yet during load (for example copying 1000GB of data from one drive to another) they will heat up to only about 40-42°C.  The only explanation I have for this is airflow - that computer has a lot of fans - 4x140mm intake fans at the side (these really force in a LOT of air), 2x80mm exhaust at the top, 1x80mm exhaust at the back and also a 140mm CPU heatsink (transverse) fan that helps force the air out of the case.

 

 

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... that computer has a lot of fans - 4x140mm intake fans at the side (these really force in a LOT of air), 2x80mm exhaust at the top, 1x80mm exhaust at the back and also a 140mm CPU heatsink (transverse) fan that helps force the air out of the case.

 

I can't see the point of having a large number of intake and exhaust fans - unless there are baffles/bulkheads between them to prevent the incoming air from being sucked straight out again.

 

'General' airflow may work if the heat-generating components are widely spaced - in an unRAID server where the drives are likely to be packed in tightly, it is essential to force air past the drives.

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