Hard Drives

gar

on buying a 7200RPM hard drive would it be necessary to get a cooler for it as well or will it work fine with out one?

Gavin

Will work fine without one.
What speed do you think those scsi drives I have are ?

Gav

Gerry

I would recommend a cooler for a drive which will be used very heavily. Otherwise, you should be fine without a cooler, the 7200 rpm drives have gotten a bit cooler as the technology develops.
The hotter drives are the western digital, ibm 120 gxp runs much cooler than the 75 gxp. Drive temperatures on the 120gxp in a closed case ( with the ventilation described below ) are around 28 - 30c. Also extremely hot is the seagate barracuda IV, this may be due to the noise insulation on the bottom of the drive.

However, do remember not to sandwich the drive into a 3.5 bay with no space above or below it. This is a recipe for death.
If you don't have enough room around it in a 3.5 bay, get a 5.25 mounting kit ( a few euro from itdirect ) and put the drive in a cdrom bay.

TacT

depends how good the general airflow in your case is.

I have two intake fans and two exhaust fans at the top of my case and both my hdd's (maxtor 7200rpm ata 66 and wd 7200rpm ata 66) only get mildly warm to the touch. Make sure they aren't getting hot and they'll be fine.

Gerry

The point is that most people just have 1 exhaust fan.

TacT

Where does he state this/you state this in the thread? Do you inspect everyone's pc's or have you done some sort of survey to come to this conclusion?

Most pcs come with one exhaust/intake fan alright but I'm not assuming anything here, just letting him know what's doing the job for me....

I believe you are the one who missed the point. He's asking how much cooling he needs or if he needs it at all, imho he's better off with a fan than without, provided he doesn't mind a bit of noise..or can find something less noisy.

how the hell is the point that most people only have 1 exhaust fan in their pc?

Gerry

Instead of saying the point is, I should have said "my point was".

Instead of saying "most people have just one case fan" I should have said "most people don't have 4".

I've built a fair few pc's at this stage, and normally they would be fairly high end machines, so they would have 2 or more fans. Most bought pc's will come with 1 or none though.

If you have heard the fans on hard drive coolers, you will know that they are usually small and whiny. So if you can get away without them it, its a good thing.

My ibm 75gxp drive needs the hard drive cooler on it to run cool, I plugged out the fans though, because they were stupidly loud.

I bought a new ibm 120gxp, and it runs fine in a 5.25 bay without a cooler. It also runs cool in a 3.5 bay, as long as its not sandwiched between 2 other drives.

Harmo

ive had no need for a cooler with my 1 and i work its ass of, lets hope it stays trouble free touch wood:p

netman

i never had a cooler on any ide drive, and so far none have failed over the years... and that's a lot of hard drives

even in a raid setup with drives relatively close to each other i haven't had problems.