I've just set up my new server, which has 5 x 12TB seagate enterprise disks in it.  I'm pre-clearing these at the moment, and I'm doing all 5 disks at once.

 

50% through the first cycle, and 2 drives are at 62 degrees, with the others nudging 57/58.  I know seagate drives are rated to 60 degrees, but I'm wondering if it's possible I will damage them?  Does anyone have any experience of this?  On my old 20-disk unraid server, from memory some of these drives hit these kind of temperatures during pre-clearing etc, but it's so long ago I can't quite remember. 

 

Of course I could stop pre-clearing on a couple of disks to allow more heat dispersion within the unit, but if possible I'd like to avoid that.

You want disk drives to be under 40C, 45C tops.

 

 

You need to address your cooling issue now.  With servers, you want the air to enter the case (most likely from the front) and flow over the hard drives and exit through the rear of the case.  You also want fans that can move air against static pressure.  (These generally make more noise but there are some that can both move air and are quiet(er).  But they cost more...)  Don't leave the side of the case open thinking it will keep the drives cooler.  It won't unless you have twenty inch box fan blowing right at them.  Air flow is your only friend in cooling hard drives.

The hard drive temps in normal operation are around 35 degrees - but I think also the fan in the bios is set to quiet.

 

This is an off-the-shelf NAS (Terramaster F5-221), so not a build I've done myself.

 

My concern is that quarterly parity checks will run the drives hot too...

What about the temperature during a parity check?    If the disks overheat during a pre-clear then I would think that there is a good chance they will overheat during a parity check.    You need your cooling to be good enough to keep temperatures under control even during a parity check.

You certainly need to up the fans (by a lot).

My experience with these pre-built NAS is that they are overly optimistic with cooling. For tightly-packed HDDs, you want the fans to push air into the drives and not pulling (because they would end up pulling air from the path of least resistance, which is not through the tiny gaps between the HDDs). So to really cool the HDDs, the fans would have to run really hard to create a vacuum that hopefully sucks some air through the gaps.

4 minutes ago, testdasi said:

You certainly need to up the fans (by a lot).

My experience with these pre-built NAS is that they are overly optimistic with cooling. For tightly-packed HDDs, you want the fans to push air into the drives and not pulling (because they would end up pulling air from the path of least resistance, which is not through the tiny gaps between the HDDs). So to really cool the HDDs, the fans would have to run really hard to create a vacuum that hopefully sucks some air through the gaps.

You may be right in a few cases but generally, the volume of air moved pushing against a head is virtually equal to the volume of air moved when sucking against a 'vacuum'.  Air exiting under pressure will still seek the path of least resistance.  The volume of air moved by most fans is often a couple of multiples larger at high speed than at low speed against the static pressure but so is the noise.  The other disadvantage against blowing the air in at the rear is that it is first heated by the electronics back there.  The electronics can tolerate higher temperatures far better than hard drives.  Furthermore, look at the commercial servers, they all suck the air in over the drives and exhaust it out the back.  ...And they basically use the same type of drive enclosures as these NAS do. 

D'oh!  For some reason the "automatic" fan profile in the BIOS wasn't working - set it to full (which is still quiet) and with all 5 drives pre-clearing temps are 30 degrees   Phew!

On 12/4/2019 at 4:28 PM, MrGrumpie said:

The hard drive temps in normal operation are around 35 degrees - but I think also the fan in the bios is set to quiet.

 

This is an off-the-shelf NAS (Terramaster F5-221), so not a build I've done myself.

 

My concern is that quarterly parity checks will run the drives hot too...

@MrGrumpie I'm looking to move my unRAID to one of these Terramaster F5-221 units. Any pointers and recommendations on getting unRAID running on one of these? 

It's easy - simply take out the internal USB drive that the Terramaster O/S is on (it's fixed with hot glue...but it's easy to take the glue off), and put in your unRAID stick.  Before you do that, just edit the EFI- folder on the unRAID stick to EFI...it should boot straight away.

I see that this is a little old but I have a question. I've been running plex on a f5-421 for less than a year which runs great but decided to build my own unraid server since I would have shortly run out of space with the 4 drive in the Terramaster (1 ssd cache). I"m curious of how you are running unraid on that system instead of TOS. My F5 is up for sale on ebay right now but I may take it down if unraid can be put on it. TOS works really well however just wanted to try unraid.

2 hours ago, John S said:

I see that this is a little old but I have a question. I've been running plex on a f5-421 for less than a year which runs great but decided to build my own unraid server since I would have shortly run out of space with the 4 drive in the Terramaster (1 ssd cache). I"m curious of how you are running unraid on that system instead of TOS. My F5 is up for sale on ebay right now but I may take it down if unraid can be put on it. TOS works really well however just wanted to try unraid.

just crack open the back and replace the internal usb stick that contains TOS with one that contains Unraid. Add some more RAM while you’re at it. There are a few videos and further discussion over at avforums about running Unraid on one of these.

 

My f5-221 has been rock solid with Unraid for close to 9 months now. 

Wow, that may have prevented or at least delayed the selling of my F5-421...Was running with a ssd cache and 4 x 12tb but was running out of space. Unraid would have freed up one of those. Went out in the mail yesterday!