Hard drive in the hot weather

[SuAndMac]

A sign of things to come for summer, we experienced a few days of extremely hot weather lately (around 35-37 degrees celcius - I shudder to think what it was inside) and I noticed the fan on the hard drive working a lot harder to compensate. Air conditioning is not an option at the moment. Can this do any damage? And what can I do to not "stress" my hard drive?
Thanks.

 

[tomf87]

Excessive heat will shorten the life of your hard drive, no doubt. We have some lab servers that just sit in an open room with fans blowing and normal room temperature and I have had a ton of those drives fail prematurely.

The only thing I can think of is to give your system more ventilation. I put a magazine or two under the rear edge of my PB so it can have air flow underneath the system. There are more elaborate (meaning not free) options for this, but it works for me. I also have a clip-on desk fan that I turn on that blows across my PB to move the heat away.

 

[Macmaniac]

You could always rig up a muffin fan rig with some batteries to blow air across the computer to keep it cool. For PBs elevating them to allow airflow is a must.

 

[SuAndMac]

Thanks for the replies! I will dig out a fan and keep it cool that way. Quick question: I have two 80gb hard drives in the G5 (using one for backup purposes) - does the heat effect both?
Meanwhile - will hope for airconditioning in the new place.

 

[crazzyeddie]

Of course the heat affects both. I would seriously consider unplugging the backup drive to reduce the internal heat (basically cut it in half in the hard drive area).