Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

OWC External Hard Drive running hot

PicnicTutorials

PicnicTutorials

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 29, 2013
546
13
I read over and over that heat on spinning drives is the enemy and causes quicker failures. I assume the outer case is dispersing the heat as it should - aka hopefully its not that hot inside as well. Cuz the outside case is very hot to the touch. Is this normal? Does yours heat up this much? Will this cause early drive failure? I have a owc mercury elite pro 5TB and 3TB - both heat up the same.

And now that I have Crashplan backing everything up these drives run 24/7 and are getting very hot. If 5 years from now everything is A-OK then I won't worry. But the drives are new and so is my experience with owc drives.
 
roadkill401

roadkill401

macrumors 6502
Jan 11, 2015
457
93
The heat of the case is in response to the heat of the drive. What sort if drive inside it quite important to your question. If you have a cheep Green drive that runs at 5200rpm, then yes you do have an issue. If you have a high speed 7200 or 10,000rpm drive, then that is probably normal. Check out the operating specs for the drive that you have installed.
 
keysofanxiety

keysofanxiety

macrumors G3
Nov 23, 2011
9,539
25,302
PicnicTutorials said:
They are 5TB and 3TB 7200rpm drives
Click to expand...

Best thing to do is to monitor the SMART data, as that'd indicate if anything's in the early stages of failure. That way if they begin to fail, it won't take you by surprise. To check the SMART data on OS X, you can use SMART Utility: http://cloudfront.volitans-software.com/smartutility312.zip

To monitor the SMART data on external drivers, you'll need to download SAT SMART Driver: https://codeload.github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver/zip/master
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom