Hard drive that can handle downloading 24/7?

[kakaliki]

Hii,
I have had my hard drives getting over heated and failing too frequently. Not sure if its due to bad drives or something else. I dont really play games on my pc. But its on most of the time of the day n night. main activiities is download torrent files and watch movies and some rare burning and surf the net.

However i think the drives that i buy might not be suitable to handle to being on 24/7 that is why they are failing after getting too hot probably.
I have attached a hard disk cooler ,and 2 fans running inside the pc and still...
I use Hdd health v 3.2 beta to monitor it which is giving me Temp: 42 celcius and health 51%.

This is bad news!



I had bad experiences with ide seagate 400gb and my silent sata samsung spinpoint 250gb disappeared from bios. this is so annoying.

Can anyone of you guys suggest a hard disk that can handle downloading 24/7 and maybe switched off once it a week or very rarely,also if u use any specific cooling system inside ur case?

Thanks ahead for all ur replies.

Kakaliki

 

[rockbyter]

Hard drives from WD have a working temp limit of 55C, Most drives are similar, and 42C means temperature is not your problem, however - downloading can be done on a really slow really old hard drive without slowing down, so to take the heat down a notch i would choose a drive running at 5400 rpms. Hard drive coolers only do so much.

Some very simple air flow across a drive will keep it cool enough for any drive to run the course of its usable life, so your failures may be power or data cable related, or physical shock. Every hard drive i ever saw killed was during transportation of the system or bouncing on the desk, etc.

 

[pinaplex]

try taking a look at the ES2 (enterprise series) hard drives from seagate. They are made to operate 24x7.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148295

 

[Shadow703793]

^Agreed. I think you also get a longer warranty on those drives.

 

[crazywheels]

Knock on wood, but I have never ever had a drive ever fail on me. Whsat are doing to your hardrives?

 

[ainarssems]

Running 24/7 is good for hard drives. Starting up is not good. Because When its not operational heads touches hdd surface and when it spins up they fly on the layer of air. It wears out when You start it up and heads are still touching disk until it gets rpm up and heads start to fly. So unless they are overheating they are better off running 24/7 then being shut down every day or even worth every half hour. Just put a fan in front of the case blowing fresh air on the hdds.

 

[crazywheels]

sometimes if you take the harddrive out of your system, and shake it gets the motor loose and it should work again

 

[xrodney]

Last 3 years I am using 8-12 hdds and running them 24/7 sometime they get heavy usage for period of days but didn't have single drive failure.
2x 15k rpm SAS
4x 320GB Seagate
1x 250GB WD
2x 500GB samsung
1x 200GB maxtor

I am cooling them by some quiet 800rpm fans and they have 26° at idle and 34° when used for long period of time.

On my older computer i used similar hdds but running them just for few hours a day and without any fan to cooling them 36-45° and i got to rma 5 hdds in 2 years.

I would suggest for you keep your hdd temperature around 30° and you will be fine. Hdds dont like too low under 20 and too high over 40 temperatures too much and as someone already said before me stopping and starting drives is stressing them much more then continuous running.

 

[lilsage]

Don't listen to some of the people above... there are some really funny people on here... but text doesn't quite show sarcasm as well as speach does.

Normal harddrives are not designed to run 24/7. They do make "enterprise" editions that are built for business use that are rated to run 24/7. They cost a bit more because of their higher quaility.

That having been said... I suspect this is more a heat issue than anything else. If the harddrive gets too hot it will significantly lower its lifespan. Also, as TOM's has shown not long ago... really want to keep a HD in a stable temp range. Going up and down can warp the platters and risk damage as well.

Thus, your best bet is to look into some harddrive cooling options, getting a new case than has harddrive cooling options, getting the enterprise edition harddrives... or any two of the list (best bet... but cooling most important)