Hard Drive Coolers?

[the_vorlon]

I have a couple 500 gig Western Digitals running RAID 1, the case already has a front mounted 120 mm fan blowing cooler outside air across the drives (the case had side mounted drives so there is really good airflow)

Are dedicated harddrive coolers worth the effort?

Under hard use the drives get mildly warmish, not even close to too hot to touch.

Advice.. suggestions... discusssions...?

 

[nvalhalla]

No, not worth it. You have good airflow already, HDD coolers just put a cheap HS on the drive and some little fans blow over it.

 

[I]

No, unless there a substantial impedance to that intake from the 120mm fan, there is no reason to add HDD coolers in any "normal" room environment (if you're in the desert, I'd have expected you to say so).

 

[the_vorlon]

Thanks all.

That is pretty much what I figured... the little fans on these HD coolers don't look like they move much air, and I have a 120 mm blowing a lot of air over the HDs...


Thanks for confirming.

 

[Mugz]

It's a gimmick to make money.

 

[gahleon]

I put a passive zalman cooler on my raptor and mounted it on the bottom of my acrylic case and I am very happy about it. I did so only because of the 10k rpm. It also has rubber offsets and it allows this thing to be a little more quiet although I haven't heard of anyone having an issue with the noise from a raptor. I suppose if you have a crap metal case, then you may have a problem with a raptor making noise. I doubt it but some people are a little anal about those things. The guys above are right its a gimmick. You already have a good cooling solution.

 

[Mugz]

I've got the two* systems in my flat: Main PC, File Server.

The main PC has a single fan blowing over the drives, specifically a 120mm. This is more than adequate for the two 7200RPM Western Digital 80GB drives I have in it. I don't think either drive has gone over 36ºC since I installed them, and that high was on a really hot day.

My file server mounts six hot-swap 15,000RPM 300GB SCSI disks in a RAID stripe array, and the drive bay for these six drives has two dedicated 120mm fans pulling air through it. The air that comes off those drives after a heavy thrashing session (i.e. defragging, or moving a few gigabytes of data from A to B) can get quite warm. I've never actually plonked a thermometer onto the bay, but my guess (based on touch) is that it's around 35ºC as well.

A WD Raptor probably would benefit slightly from additional cooling, seeing as how it's SCSI technology with IDE/ATA controllers, and SCSI drives with high RPM ratings can get quite warm. Since I don't run a Raptor anywhere, I really can't say (I'd love to repace my file server with one running Raptors, but they don't go big enough...).

*for the purposes of this post I'm ignoring the DHCP server, the laptop, the testbed/victim, and the other... bits.

 

[billdcat4]

It's a gimmick to make money.

yea a gimmick

i remember reading an article not that long ago that showed that cooler drives did not last longer than hotter ones, in fact they died sooner.

So dont get any fancy HD coolers, its all a waste