What Can I Do To Cool Down Hard Drives

S

Southy

New Member
Currently in my PC I have 6 hard drives hooked up (all internally) and when its running, over time the temperatures of the drives hit really high temperatures (50 degrees) and I was wondering, besides adding more fans, is there something I can do to bring down the temperatures?

I have heard of devices that you can buy to attach to the drives themselves and it will help keep them cool, any idea on where you could buy such a device or is it a good idea? I would like to do something to my PC keep the drives cool but still keep the drives in the tower at the same time. Any ideas? Thanks.
 
There are two things in particular for cooling drives down as well as other hardwares inside a case. For hard drives alone you can select a separate drive cooler like those seen at http://www.coolerguys.com/hadrco.html

The second was actually seen with the increased air flow inside by choosing a model that allows for front intake fans where hard drives are mounted in most desktop model cases. To give you an example of how to cool down the three hard drives installed here as well as seeing board and cpu temps lowered along the way one model case offered a solution.

Please note there are other case styles besides the one seen at http://www.xoxide.com/aerocool-aeroengine-2-black.html Besides the 140mm front intake and 120mm rear exhaust fan two more 120mm fans were added to the clear side cover on this model.
 
i would suggest attaching cooling fans directly to the hard drives which you can get from many pc parts places, plus place your main drive at the bottom as "hot air rises". also yes front intake fans that fit into 5 1/2 inch bays with mounting for 3 1/2 " drives usually with 2 x 40mm fans to draw air through front of case, also you most probably have space in front panel of your case(under the face plate) for either a 120mm fan or one or maybe two 80mm fans.
so now you have air flowing into your case ...GREAT !! now we need to get that air circulating through your case, you don't want to waste all that nice cool air so to keep it flowing put in as big a fan as possible in the back panel(mine takes either 80/90/120 mm) if it only has space for 80mm, then you can buy converter from 80mm-120mm if you have space(depth) in the case.

i have also found that turning the side intake(if you have one) around to blow out, it seems to add to the performance of the cooling, i only have three hard drives in mine but they run constant at 21oC/29oC and 25oC.

Another thing to remember is sealing the case as much as possible to help create as much of a vacuum as possible, the main oversight people make is not having blanking plates in place over spare PCI slots on the back of the case.

one last thing-- black attracts heat so if your case IS black it may add slightly to your problem but not really anything to worry about.

hope i have given you a few ideas and i'm going now cos my fingers are gonna fall off.:eek:
 
Thanks for your reply guys. I would like to add more fans, I just dont know how it would be possible other than to install something right on the hard drives themselves. Its just its a little tight for space between each of them so I dont know how well that will even work. I already have one small fan in the front of the case, 2 at the back above the pci slots and one big one in the side. These help but it still gets very warm, so I would like to add more.

I got looking at those websites and I came across this:
http://www.thermaltake.com/product/Accessory/DriveBay/a2321/a2321.asp
My main question is, if used some of these, would I still be able to keep them installed inside the case?
 
If you’re not worried about appearance, get rid of the sides of your case if possible and set up a small fan to blow strait through the case. It will probably be the easiest, most time effective, and quietest of the solutions.
 
Sacrinyellow5 said:
If you’re not worried about appearance, get rid of the sides of your case if possible and set up a small fan to blow strait through the case. It will probably be the easiest, most time effective, and quietest of the solutions.
Click to expand...

This is the solution I do on this computer, and my brother does on his.
LOL.
The easiest thing to do, for sure =)
Especially on my brothers, because he has 0 case fans... So his airflow is nonexistiant.
 
I dumped the case due to the lack of airflow with no front intake or vents to allow cooler air. That model like all too many other mid tower cases lacks any front intake or side vents on smooth side covers without vent slots there. When seeing board temps at 46-48C idle I said "no way"!

Going from a case with two 80mm case fans; one rear exhaust, one top near back of case to one having a 140mm front intake and a 120mm along with adding two 120s on the side cover saw that 48C suddenly down to 31C! The model now used is seen at http://www.xoxide.com/aerocool-aeroengine-2-black.html Later I saw the Antec 900 model case but...
 
Nutter said:
wtf 6 hard drives! why u need 6?
Click to expand...

I could use 6 500gb sata drives for all the files that grab disk space here fast enough. :P Gee? If I add three more satas to the two ide and one sata alreadu installed I would probably end up with only one for storage and the others for ... Linux distros?
 
PC eye said:
Going from a case with two 80mm case fans; one rear exhaust, one top near back of case to one having a 140mm front intake and a 120mm along with adding two 120s on the side cover saw that 48C suddenly down to 31C! The model now used is seen at http://www.xoxide.com/aerocool-aeroengine-2-black.html Later I saw the Antec 900 model case but...
Click to expand...

I originally went with a good case that came with (2) 80mm Fans at the rear below the power supply, (1) 80mm Fan at the top of the case, (1) 80mm Fan at the bottom front of the case and (1) 120mm Fan on the side, much like the case you posted. I even added an extra fan at the top where the empty 5.25" bays are but I still seem to reach high temperatures with so many hard drives hooked up.

Sacrinyellow5 said:
If you’re not worried about appearance, get rid of the sides of your case if possible and set up a small fan to blow strait through the case. It will probably be the easiest, most time effective, and quietest of the solutions.
Click to expand...
This is probably what I'll end up doing, I have a small but powerful fan that I can set beside it. I just thought if there was any other options, I would ask you guys first.

Nutter said:
wtf 6 hard drives! why u need 6?
Click to expand...
lol.. I keep everything and they arent all very large drives, I just like to have access to all my stuff if I need it.
 
Besides going with larger capacity hard drives to reduce the number of drives actually needed like Seagate's new 750gb sata drive the options for water cooling setups or the ultimate in cooling would be an air conditioned case to start off with. For a look at a totally liquid cooled case one ThermalTake full tower on wheels fits the bill as seen at http://www.xoxide.com/thermaltake-tai-chi-liquid-cooled-case-vb5001sna.html

A pair of air conditioned Masscool models can be seen at http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_...onditioned+pc+case/mode=yahoo_us_s/skd=1/rd=1 And as always there are air conditioning kits you can buy separately like some seen at http://www.elexp.com/cpt_ofc2.htm and http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/searchdetail.asp?productID=6423
 
I just bought one of these off ebay.
Ok i doubt they are brilliant, but look pretty cool to try out considering the £3 price tag.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200083908399&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSA:UK:11

bn_front.jpg


Thought might give it a go its so cheap.
 
It certainly won't hurt to add an extra cooling device. But some makes are obviously better for reasons. "Cheap" can also mean real "cheapo" at times. Try shopping around at the regular vendors before rushing into anything.
 
Hmmmm
I highly doubt any of the hard drives are SCSI seeing as I'm one of the few who likes the interface, but if they are I'd suggest maybe splitting them up, 3 in the case so you have space for fans/coolers etc. and having 3 in an external setup which you could also cool very easily

If not and if you enjoy a good challenge, maybe cut a small section out of your case side to run the sata/ide cables out to an external rigging(maybe get an external scsi case and just use it for the psu and mounting, or just make something yourself) and have them pretty much side by side or maybe welded or whatever your imagination lead you to, if you could run a cable from the board to the external rig youd be golden for cooling and you could also split any loads on the psu

Well

Good Luck

Castro
 
taylormsj said:
I just bought one of these off ebay.
Ok i doubt they are brilliant, but look pretty cool to try out considering the £3 price tag.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200083908399&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSA:UK:11

bn_front.jpg


Thought might give it a go its so cheap.
Click to expand...

I have better versions.. I have 2, mine are very quite, and keep drives nice and cool. 30*C max...and they are 3GB/s Drives too....sadly, I cant use both. I have a mid size case an a 120mm fan on my top HDD blowing at the MOBO to keep it cool...an HDD with 1 of those takes up 2 HDD slots...
 
The built here has three hard drives directly in front of the 140mm front intake fan with a drive bay free inbetween each. The new sata drive added is below the two identical ide drives due to the way the harness has to be wrapped since the floppy drive is also plugged in. To add coolers here I would have to space them 3 drive bays apart. "will the cables reach?" :eek: :confused: :P
 
I kind of like this idea:
http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/searchdetail.asp?productID=6423
That is, if its actually AC... I think if I got 2 of these, it would help out a lot. I thought about buying some of those parts that you got off ebay, but as you said, it would take up an extra hdd slot and I wanna use as many of them as possible.

In that picture of the side of the open case, is the fan above the hard drives taped on? I would like to add more fans but I'm limited to where I can put them with all the cables and drives installed.

Would better air flow be a better solution here or do you think I should remove every other drive and hook them up externally ( which I want to avoid to save desk space if possible )
 
PC eye said:
The built here has three hard drives directly in front of the 140mm front intake fan with a drive bay free inbetween each. The new sata drive added is below the two identical ide drives due to the way the harness has to be wrapped since the floppy drive is also plugged in. To add coolers here I would have to space them 3 drive bays apart. "will the cables reach?" :eek: :confused: :P
Click to expand...

????
 
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