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

Who else has a WD 320GB Drive in his ibook/PowerBook and can tell me the temperature?

C

Cox Orange

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 1, 2010
1,814
241
Hello,

I have a 320Gb WD blue HDD in my ibook G4 for years. Now I beleive it is getting very hot, but I am not sure, if I am just subjectively feeling it different or if it is a combination with room temperature or if a recent incident (when someone slammed his fist on the desk, near my ibook, which was running) is the maybe the cause.

I know that it wasn't exactly cold or warm earlier anyway, but I think it is hooter now.
Currently 52°C (125°F), but I believe I had 54°C lately. SMART says it is within tolerance.

You can measure it with this tool http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/12381/temperature-monitor
or the trial of Volitans SMART Utility.

It migth as well be, that I am just paranoid and the temeperatures have always been that way.

Thanks.
 
The hard drive in an iBook is immediately above the graphics chip. For an iBook G3 at least; not sure about iBook G4 though.
 
No, in G4s it is under your palm next to the track pad and the chips of the mainboard start under the keyboard.

Maybe I am just paranoid, I guess, could well be that I had temperatures of 54°C (125°F) before. Strange though WD's specs say the drive can cope with up to 60°C, so I guess I am near the wall...
 
Cox Orange said:
No, in G4s it is under your palm next to the track pad and the chips of the mainboard start under the keyboard.
Click to expand...

I know the hard drive is there, I mean I wasn't sure where the graphics chips where.
 
Yeah, I know this link. The problem is, backblaze isn't very reliable. I trusted them, too, until I found more info.

1. if they are big, why do they buy the drives in real life shops and not get a supplier deal?
2. I did see some videos and pictures of them, where they buy the drives and put them in a trunk, with just light packaging around them getting all sorts of shocks in the trunk. Then they empty cartons of Drives on the desk, where some of them fall off the desk.
3. they use drives not intended to be used in servers, NASes etc.

Here is a good read about backblaze's reliability http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6...bility-myth-the-real-story-covered/index.html

4. there are a lot of studies, every study comes to a different results. I thin it was googles servers who prefer Hitachi, the next has the smallest failure rate with WD, then a french hard drive seller reveals that he has 6% WD black coming back defective of 100.000 units sold per model in 2TB drives, while HItachi had rank one in 1TB drives. Not to talk about Seagate...
 
To be honest, what Backblaze does, especially points 2 and 3 mirrors real life more accurately then following manufacturer's specifications and usage.

Probably a better barometer for the average consumer rather than businesses, I suppose.
 
Cox Orange said:
Good point! But then again, you won't run desktop drives 24/7.
Click to expand...
Disagree.

PowerMac G5 was on 24/7 from February 2005 until about March 2013 at work including weekends and holidays. Set to never sleep. It only stopped in that year because either the logicboard or CPU failed. After replacement and some further time at my home (again, 24/7) it came back to work where it is again left on 24/7.

Two PowerMac G4s at work, on 24/7, also set to never sleep.

One Mac Pro at work, on 24/7 from about April 2013 to now, also set not to sleep.

My PowerBooks at home are on 24/7 as is my Quicksilver. The QS is set to never sleep as I use it for Time Machine backups.

iMac G5 at home is always on. It sleeps though.

I never turn any of my computers off. PC or Mac.

I might be an extreme case though.
 
eyoungren said:
PowerMac G5 was on 24/7 from February 2005 until about March 2013 at work including weekends and holidays. Set to never sleep. It only stopped in that year because either the logicboard or CPU failed. After replacement and some further time at my home (again, 24/7) it came back to work where it is again left on 24/7.

Two PowerMac G4s at work, on 24/7, also set to never sleep.

One Mac Pro at work, on 24/7 from about April 2013 to now, also set not to sleep.

My PowerBooks at home are on 24/7 as is my Quicksilver. The QS is set to never sleep as I use it for Time Machine backups.
Click to expand...

This is rather common to do but why do you/they do it? I'd only leave a machine up if it had something to do... like a server. Do all those machines run a server or something like that?
 
poiihy said:
This is rather common to do but why do you/they do it? I'd only leave a machine up if it had something to do... like a server. Do all those machines run a server or something like that?
Click to expand...
In the case of the G5 it's habit.

When we first got the G5 it came with Panther. For a year or so, if I allowed the Mac to sleep it would NEVER wake up when I needed to use it. I had to restart it.

Not a big deal for most people, but we connect to a lot of server shares at work and window positions tend not to be saved because those shares are on a PC server.

So, not only do we have to reopen previously open programs we have to connect to the shares again and set our windows again.

It became enough of a hassle that I just abandoned the whole sleep thing altogether and just let the displays sleep,

Apple later on issued a firmware update that fixed this but at that point it didn't matter.

One of the G4s is an Applescript server and the other G4 is a print server, backup Composing machine.

I could let them sleep, but I don't see a point in it, the Applescript server in particular. It has a hard time remembering the share's it's connected to when I wake it. Usually it just crashes and I'm forced to restart anyway.

As to my home Macs. most of them are laptops so this isn't a big deal. The QS, as I mentioned, serves as a Time Machine backup server so I don't want it to sleep.

I don't care if I have to wake up the iMac G5, so I let it sleep,

Lastly, convenience.

It's a real PITA having to boot back up, reconnect to shares, reopen apps, find and reset all my folders and then go.

Easier just to walk up to the Mac and find everything running and connected.
 
Cox Orange said:
Good point! But then again, you won't run desktop drives 24/7.
Click to expand...

I do. Bought 4x1TB Hitachi drives in late 2010 which went in some firewire enclosures. When the PSUs failed for a second time the drives then went into a HP Microserver that does NAS duties for a couple of years. Two are now "retired" into a Netgear NAS that does Time Machines duties.

Screenshot%202015-01-06%2001.27.28.png


That's 4.5 years of power on hours. Incidentally not one of the 4 is showing any errors, and they've been utterly faultless. For that reason the NAS got upgraded with Toshiba 3TB drives - they bought and rebadged the HGST operation. They've now been running for just over 12 months without incident.

As far as I'm concerned the Backblaze data holds water from what I've seen doing IT support for an organisation with 4000 odd clients.
 
@Magicboy:

What app do you use to display SMART?

On using Toshibas and Hitachis in a NAS, I guess they have always had some sort of other specification features. For example people alway moaned that Hitachis were not as fast as Samsung Drives (though the fewest people would have noticed it in real life), but Hitachi drives (from my experience) tend to be quieter and cooler, also. So no wonder, if they are a bit slower, that they can run quieter and cooler. This might make them better NAS drives as well.
Well, you convinced me. You are right. :)

I heard a lot of good about the 3TB Toshibas, too, from people using them for NAS and servers, now that you mention it, I remember. Yeah I know, Hitachi (HGST) got divided between WD and Toshiba. Someone in another forum was guessing, if Toshiba might have picked the better factories in the deal, when he looked at recent drives.

But then again, when you compare several studies, you find what I said above, that some will say Hitachi is rock solid and others will say WD or, when they were still around Samsung. (I never understood, why Seagate had such a high reputation, though. It also seems Samsung has degraded, since they belong to Seagate. As a sie note: the Seagate 3TB ...DM001 is very popular and at the same time you can hear all sort of horror stories from them).

There are people who absolutely dislike Hitachi (I guess that still comes form, when they sold IBM IDE drives fro a while, long ago) and others say a lot of bad about the WD Greens, though their failures belonged only to the first generation and since they seem to have become a good model series.

Whatever... What do I know. :)
 
That screenshot is from the web interface of the Netgear NAS box.

If I've remembered correctly, HGST were acquired by WD who had to sell off the Desktop/Consumer 3.5" business to placate the regulators. It was a good fit for Toshiba as they only made portable drives and SSDs.
 
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
Back