I bought a little MSI box to put two of these hard disks in. There is a 3.5 slot and a 5.25 slot. I bought an adapter for the 5.25 optical slot and have installed a hard disk there.
The problem I’m having is that the case air flow isn’t really designed to cool the 5.25 bay. The 3.5" bay runs around 96-104 degrees, but the 5.25" bay runs closer to 110 degrees, and its sitting idle.
Is it a problem for the drive to operate at 110 degrees? The specifications page says that the drive operating temperature is 32 to 140 degrees. However my SMART tools warn when the drive goes over about 107 degrees.
the drives are designed to run up to 140F, so as long as you’re at or under that, you’re fine.
i have a WD laptop hard drive as a comparision that’s rated for 70c and i’ve run it in my old dell @ 75c - 80c for close to 3 years and it never once had any issues what so ever relating to performance.
it got up to 90c once and all it did was power down and stop, I just let it cool and started it up again, it didn’t permently damage it or anything, So i wouldn’t worry much if i was you.
my poor old dell had like no cooling for a 7200 drive, i knew it when i put it in, it ran hot but for the most part it worked great, regardless.
On the topic of cooling, I just picked up a 2TB Desk Elements drive, which has no vents what’s so ever.
I don’t understand, nor can I find any information as to the method that WD is using to cool these? I’m just wondering, because if I were to format this drive, this could take up to 6 or more hours of continuous run time which I would think would really stress this drive since there is no cooling. I was almost thinking of drilling a few holes in the top of the unit, and one on the bottom to get some air flow. Or does this drive run so cool that doesn’t need any air holes?
