I just finished upgrading my computer, replacing a 300GB hard drive with a 1 TB hard drive (WD1001FALS Caviar Black), and adding a second 1 TB hard drive in an external enclosure to use for backing up the internal drive.

I am concerned about how hot the drive in the external enclosure gets.

The one in the computer case has a big fan blowing air across it all the time, so it probably stays cooler than the external one that just sits out in the open. The drive gets hot enough when it is working continuously (as in formatting the drive, or copying 200 GB of files onto it) that it is very uncomfortable for me to hold my fingers on the top of it. I would guess the temperature at the top of the outer case is approaching 130--140 degrees F.

Is this a matter for concern?

tanstaafl.

It should not be getting hotter than 50C. If it is, the lifespan will be shortened, possibly dramatically.

When I use drives in my Vantec dock, they're only spun up (generating significant heat) while the backup is in progress. I spin them down and/or remove power when not actively backing things up.

Here in the Great White North, this means the drive doesn't normally get very hot.

If you're running Linux, you can use hddtemp to interrogate the actual drive temperature from its onboard sensor, assuming an eSATA connection.

Cheers

Active@ is the best free hard drive monitoring tool I've found for Windows.

Bitt, thanks. I did not know it and it is better than anything I have used so far.

Might as well round up the OS list with an OS X monitoring app, any one of the iStat programs work well: http://www.islayer.com/apps/

Nice! worked well for my laptop. For my HP pavilion MCE box, not so well. The BIOS disables SMART on all drives, and doesn't allow enabling. What it does allow is some idiot level test that checks the drive's SMART data and gives a simple PASS/FAIL.

I'm giving a fail for future HP purchases.

Huh? Is it even possible for the BIOS to disable access to SMART on a drive? I thought the toggle option in the BIOS was for that simple yes/no check that it does.

Is there any way you can bodge a fan into the enclosure? In the past I've had hard drives in cases with only the PSU fan and they get horribly hot, in recently machines I've built I've added front and rear case fans and it seems to make a huge difference.

This cound mean a couple of different things.

S.M.A.R.T. can be enabled and disabled on the fly, by both the BIOS and software. The BIOS cannot prevent software from enabling it, though. Except..

Modern drives often implement DCO (Drive Configuration Overlay), which is a way for a BIOS to selectively disable certain drive features, and have the drive no longer even report that those features exist. hdparm --dco-identify can give information about this.

The DCO modifications can also be frozen with a command from the BIOS (or from software, for that matter), such that a full power-cycle is required to regain access to deleted functionality.

Cheers

As you can see from the picture, it isn't really in an enclosure. The drive is like a piece of toast in a toaster, with only the bottom third "enclosed", the rest of it sticks out in the air. That part that sticks out is what I am concerned about -- the top edge of it stays uncomfortably hot.

I've installed the Active@ software that Bitt linked to to see what the actual temperature is, and it works a treat -- except for another problem I've encountered.

My computer sees the external drive just fine with a USB connection, but of course the Active@ software doesn't monitor USB drives. I have gotten the computer to see the external drive one time with the SATA connection, after I figured out that (a) the USB cable has to be not connected, and (b) the computer has to be rebooted with the SATA cable connected and the drive powered up. (At that time I did not have the Active@ software installed.)

Since that time, I have not been able to obtain a SATA connection despite numerous attempts. Is there some sequence I have to follow, perhaps some arcane incantation I am supposed to chant, to make this connection?

Oh, wait - in the interest of not making myself sound like a complete idiot, I checked the back of my computer (not a trivial task with my setup, it involves moving a 250 pound computer hutch containing another 60 pounds of computer/printer/scanner/monitor/speakers/stuff) away from the wall) and guess what I found dangling out of the back of the hutch? (You're way ahead of me, aren't you... )

I'll disconnect the USB cable, reboot the computer, and see if an extra Terabyte of storage shows up in Windows Explorer. Meanwhile, I have set up my own highly sophisticated temperature monitoring system (Bah! Who needs fancy Active@ software when I have a meat thermometer and some Scotch tape!) and it is showing a lower temperature than I had feared, something around 110 degrees F or 43 degrees C., assuming that the needle travel is linear because the lowest temperature marked on the dial is 140.

To be continued...

tanstaafl.

Even better, one or two of these.

Assuming that you don't keep the house unreasonably hot, leaving the drive open to the air like that means that it's as cool as it's gonna get.

Overheating hard disk problems usually only occur when you're enclosing them in small spaces, such as unventilated sections of computer cases.

Those are really neat! However, as I had suspected, having the hard drive's data cable disconnected from the back of my computer did indeed prove deleterious to SATA connectivity.

An accurate digital thermometer taped to the outside of the case shows a temperature of 105 degrees. Active@ shows an internal temperature of 120 degrees. A 15 degree difference outside/inside is not unreasonable, and neither temperature is cause for serious alarm. Interestingly, the identical 1 TB drive inside the computer case, being lovingly bathed by two five inch diameter fans, is running more than 35 degrees cooler (at 84 degrees internal temp) so the benefit of airflow around the drive is clear.

Next, I'll see what happens to the temperatures when I start running the drives under load (right now they are just spinning, no read/write activity.) I have about 12 GB of data to back up from the internal drive to the external drive now, so we'll see what happens.

To be continued...

tanstaafl.

Not really. There's nothing moving the hot air away from the drive, so the environment will approach equilibrium with the drive. If you had air moving over it, it would have a constant supply of cool air.

In other words, forced convection is a more efficient method of heat removal than natural diffusive convection.

Exactly.

When I started working the drive, writing 12 GB to it, it quickly went up to a critical temperature of 122 degrees (50 degrees C) and stayed there. I set up a fan to blow across it, and in two minutes the internal temperature dropped by six degrees, eventually stabilizing at 96 degrees, a 26 degree drop. The fan-cooled drive inside the computer case which was being read from but not written to rose three degrees in temperature, from 84 degrees (F) to 87 degrees.

Ambient room temperature for all of this was 76 degrees.

Obviously if I am going to keep the temperature of the external drive down to a reasonably safe level I will have to get some sort of fan to blow across the drive when it is in use.

tanstaafl.

Wikipedia links to this hdparam for windows, which seems to be a couple years out of date.