Best cooling techniques for Hard drives

paqman · #1 03-12-2007, 06:06 PM

Hey, I'm just wondering what are the best products out there for keeping your hard drives cool. I've got a coupl SATA and an IDE running in my home theater pc that I'd like to keep cool. I've seen little hard drive fans you can buy on ebay for like $10, but I want advice from the pros! And also, what do you do when you've got two hard drives you want to cool, but they're so close together, you can't fit fans on the bottom one?
Thanks.

Kevin_gibson · #2 03-29-2007, 03:02 AM

Paqman,
Personally I've not heard of hard drive fans, I think the main thing you could do when having hard drives close to each other is try and put a gap between each one. The PSU fan should be powerful enough to keep the HDDs cool but you could leave at least maybe 2-3 cmrs of space between each drive, maybe up to 5 cmrs.

Did a search on the Internet, this looks suitable with the problem you're having:

http://www.nexfan.com/scythe-kama-bay-silver.html

Take a look, sorry if it's not your answer as I'm not familiar with the cooler.

paqman · #3 03-29-2007, 03:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevin_gibson

Paqman,
Personally I've not heard of hard drive fans, I think the main thing you could do when having hard drives close to each other is try and put a gap between each one. The PSU fan should be powerful enough to keep the HDDs cool but you could leave at least maybe 2-3 cmrs of space between each drive, maybe up to 5 cmrs.

Thanks for the reply, however, I have no control on how close together these drives are. They are in a PowerEdge SC420, and like most Dell's, they only fit in certain locations. The drive bays are only big enough for 2 drives each, and I've got both of them filled with 2 drives.

So really, even the drive-top fans wouldn't be possible here. I guess I need to ask people who have more specifically worked on the SC420, like at the PowerEdge forums. Cause I'd like to put a couple 80mm fans in front of the drives pulling air out of the case, but after pulling it apart, it doesn't look possible.

Oh well. Thanks anyway!

Kevin_gibson · #4 03-29-2007, 03:23 AM

Why don't you have a word with Dell and see if they can suggest or recommend a solution? That would be the best thing as it's their PC and can supply the correct information to your query.

paqman · #5 03-29-2007, 03:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevin_gibson

Why don't you have a word with Dell and see if they can suggest or recommend a solution? That would be the best thing as it's their PC and can supply the correct information to your query.

Good idea, and I may try that, however, this is an entry level server, and I'm sure that getting a good cooling solution for these drives would involve doing a little hacking, and I'm pretty sure Dell would just tell me that they don't support that kind of thing. But that fan link you put in your last post might be a good solution. I'm hoping to put a fan so that it will blow the air out of the pc. But if I can't figure that out, I'll definitely take a look into that link you posted.

harry12 · #6 03-30-2007, 11:31 AM

It should depend on the drive temperature - is it feeling hot, high air temp etc. I+You indicate it's a server application - but why use a very-compact machine when something larger would appear to be a better solution.
If you can't get solution from DEL, and the drives are too hot you may have to cut the case (oops!) and fit these extra fans - but it's not an elegant solution and may be quite noisy.....but lowering ambient temperature will improve reliability.
I have seen cheapo ($3.£5) fans of about 30mm square size....these can be put anywhere inside the case and stirring up the air will help. However, taking the heat "out" is the better Goal.A small fan shouldn't overload yr psu but it's worth checking since all that power has to come out of the PSU - there might be another fix - put the PSU outside and use the extra space for HDD fans......Dell won't like it and you need to understand what you are doing regarding the wiring, safety etc......but it's all fairly mechanical...once you work out how Dell gets all that stuff inside....

paqman · #7 03-30-2007, 09:51 PM

Quote:

why use a very-compact machine when something larger would appear to be a better solution.

Simple answer to that. I'm not made of money. I've had the server for a couple years, and it wasn't till now that I decided to throw all these drives in there.

Taking out the PSU would work, but not really feasible for me. Look, I'm not really worried about them over heating, I'm simply looking for a method to keep them cooler to expand their life time. I may think about putting a fan on the back of them like the solution you gave, at least that would stir the air up in the case.