Hard drive temperatures

[paul.opensource]

For those of you running temperature sensors (iStat Nano, etc), what are your hard drive temperatures? My G4 Digital Audio has 2 SATA drives mounted one in the factory position and one to it's immediate left, not stacked. They are both 7200 rpm drives. The boot drive runs at a constant 108F and the backup drive runs at around 106F. This seems hot, but I have no comparison temperatures.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Tesselator]

For those of you running temperature sensors (iStat Nano, etc), what are your hard drive temperatures? My G4 Digital Audio has 2 SATA drives mounted one in the factory position and one to it's immediate left, not stacked. They are both 7200 rpm drives. The boot drive runs at a constant 108F and the backup drive runs at around 106F. This seems hot, but I have no comparison temperatures.

Thanks in advance.

You want your drives to be as close to room temperature as is humanly possible. My room temp right now is 23C and my 4 drives are between 23C and 25C. In heavy video editing my drives will occasionally see 30C to 34C. Seagate is careful not to offer a recommendation but they've slipped twice in the past that I know of and both times they generally recommended keeping them at between room temp and 36C. This is general info because there are special HDDs designed especially for high heat operation and etc.

So if you care about babying your drives you will never allow them to go over 36C. That said, drives are so cheap now that the little bit of life stolen from them by running them at 40C or even 45C (omg!) just isn't important to most people.

 

[paul.opensource]

You want your drives to be as close to room temperature as is humanly possible. My room temp right now is 23C and my 4 drives are between 23C and 25C. In heavy video editing my drives will occasionally see 30C to 34C. Seagate is careful not to offer a recommendation but they've slipped twice in the past that I know of and both times they generally recommended keeping them at between room temp and 36C. This is general info because there are special HDDs designed especially for high heat operation and etc.

So if you care about babying your drives you will never allow them to go over 36C. That said, drives are so cheap now that the little bit of life stolen from them by running them at 40C or even 45C (omg!) just isn't important to most people.

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it. I changed my temp sensor to show celsius so I could compare to your figures. After cleaning out some dust bunnies, I am now getting 36C and 34C for my boot annd data drives respectively. Not sure how to keep it lower than that here in South Texas - room temperature is at 80F right now. I have a completely stock G4 DA, with the exception of the drives.

According to WD, the max operating temp for my data drive is 55C and as you mentioned, Seagate says nothing about temperatures. So, my WD appears safe, but the Seagate I'll just have to see...

Thanks again.

 

[Tesselator]

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it. I changed my temp sensor to show celsius so I could compare to your figures. After cleaning out some dust bunnies, I am now getting 36C and 34C for my boot annd data drives respectively. Not sure how to keep it lower than that here in South Texas - room temperature is at 80F right now. I have a completely stock G4 DA, with the exception of the drives.

According to WD, the max operating temp for my data drive is 55C and as you mentioned, Seagate says nothing about temperatures. So, my WD appears safe, but the Seagate I'll just have to see...

Thanks again.

Yeah, 36/34 C should be fine. Yeah, they all say the max rating. This is different than a recommended operating temp. tho. That 55C is max - just before you get into serious trouble. And most are 50C or 55C. I suppose there could be some "common" drives around that say the max is 60C but I haven't seen any.

On the life stolen comment I made earlier it's like if we say the life span of a properly babied drive is between 6 and 8 years at 24/7 (which might be a little long but not unreasonably) and if we also say that running it between 40C and 45C all the time cuts it's life in half (which I think is not an unreasonable assumption) then at 3 or 4 years into the drive's usage you're in danger of a failure. And here's why people don't care: Who keeps a drive longer than 4 years?

And there are exceptions of course. I'm sure there's someone who has been running their drives at 45C for the past 8 years straight. I bet there's more who had them bust at 3 years in cuz they weren't properly cooled tho.

Which brings me to your next question. Texas is a tough one. I have family there (in Tyler) and wow, talk about harsh conditions for a computer. Airflow is the most common way to cool drives. I've seen heat-syncs both passive and active sold for HDDs. Most of the ones I've seen are cheep (like $10 or $15) and would probably work in a Mac Pro box for bays 2, 3, and 4. If you absolutely hate the idea of drive failure I guess you could do that?!

Prudence is monitoring your S.M.A.R.T. stats if your drive supports it and as soon as you start getting warnings go spend $90 on a 1TB drive and replace that sucker. I'm at 3 years in with zero warnings on all parameters with the set I have in this mac.

 

[paul.opensource]

Seagate

This 80 gig Seagate I'm running as a boot drive has been in use for about 4 years, but it hasn't stayed powered up, at least the first 4 years of it's life it ran Linux and was powered down every night. Now that it's in my G4, it stays on 24/7, but I sleep the box and don't turn it off.

I have had drives last one year and 6+. I have a little 20 gig 7200rpm WD that I know is at least 5 or 6 years old and it still works fine. I had a Maxtor that was replaced on warranty twice in a year, so that's the other extreme I guess.

I wouldn't mind finding a better cooling solution for this G4, but I am not sure they exist since there are no actual drive bays except for the cdrom. I also thought about removing the left side plastic cover because it covers the air intake/exhaust for the 120mm fan, but I think there is a vent on the bottom to take care of air flow for this fan, and I am not sure how much better it would cool without the cover, plus it would look ugly...