Acer TM 4403LMI heat issues.

Hi guys.

I have an Acer TM4403:

1.8Ghz AMD Turion ML32
1gig DDR333 RAM
80Gb drive, 15" etc;

The hard drive (Seagate 5400 80gig) has been reaching 56ºC idle and reaching up to 61ºC under load. The drive has developed bad sectors which I feel is heat related, it's also started hanging while trying to boot XP.

Now this is the second drive that's started failing, the first drive was a Samsung 5400 80Gig and that would sometimes reach 64ºC under load.

I think it's a physical defect with this model, the heat does not seem to exit the hard drive area properly, I have even ran the notebook with the back plastic cover removed (that covers the HDD+RAM bays) which doesn't help much at all! So far the *only* way I've gotten it cooler is to run the notebook sitting upright but on it's SIDE.

I'm going to demand Acer replace the notebook because if they give me another hard drive it's just going to fail again from heat and I'll be back where I started.

I'm negotiating with Acer but I have a funny feeling they're going to tell what they said last time "We ackknowledge the hard drive runs extremely hot but it's not hot enough for us to do anything"... so, if anyone can suggest a last resort mod/work around ? I don't want to replace it with a 4200RPM drive, though.

Any suggestions? I can't find many people with this model, I'm trying to find out if it's a design flaw as far as heat issues go.

Thanks!

 

Welcome to the forums

My Aspire 5684WLMi hardrive runs at the same temps as yours in Summer and on warm days. Acer told me its not a problem. I dont know if I believe them.

How long did you have your Travelmate for before the first HDD failure?

 

The first drive developed bad sectors about 11-13 months after purchasing it (I can't recall exactly) and my second hard drive (which I replaced, not Acer) developed bad sectors and other random problems about a month after installing it.

One thing I've noticed for sure, is that when it's very hot, random things start happening. Acer left it on their 'stress test' for 7 days and to them no problems. Bah.

 

Seagate offer a 5 year warranty on the Momentus range. See here:

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/momentus/

I would contact them and see if they won't replace it.

 

I know about that, the problem I'm finding myself in is that I can replace the HDD as many times as I want but I'm dead sure they're all going to just over heat and give me grief.

It's not a hard drive fault, it's the heating, I've ran these same Seagate models in USB housings and they don't even get warm.

I am going to replace the drive anyway, and when it overheats and dies again Acer are going to get a taste of my fury