HDD S.M.A.R.T. reports very high heat

[Raern]

My HDD is a WD Caviar, 200gb, SATA drive. It's located in a drive cage in the front of my case, with a fan pushing air onto it. I'd say airflow isn't fantastic, but it is moving.

I downloaded speedfan to keep an eye on my CPU, and it reported my HDD as over 60 degrees celsius at some times, rarely under 55. I attached a temperature sensor from my fan controller to the top of the HDD and it reports 26 degrees C.

I tried googling this but couldn't find any more than vague references. Is the HDD's internal sensor likely to be wrong? Should I be worried?

Thanks for your help,
Raern

 

[PCcashCow]

That reading seems to be off, at the very least I'd say to average the two.
Operating 5° C to 55° C
Non-operating -40° C to 65° C >>
are the specs for operating temps for any non-scsi device 10k or under for WD retail products.

Since your phyisical touch sensor of the outer drive seems to most accurate temp reading, The drives are designed to disipate heat onto the outer casing. If you have a laser temp guage you could investigate the temp of the air moving over the hard drive and then at it's exit point. If you were operating at 60C for a long period of time, there would usually be warning in evenlogs reported by the harddrives embossed system tools. I think your fine, but keep a clear eye on it, maybe test out of case. b

 

[sturm]

I'd say the temp reading for speedfan is wrong. Look thru the setup and make sure the settings are correct for that sensor.
I dont use speedfan. I use motherboard monitor on my other computer and it has a sensor that always reads 32 F. The cpu and system temps are correct.

 

[Codesmith]

Monitors almost never assign all the sensors to the right devices, and often they don't know how to interpret the raw data from the sensors properly.