Really fregan hot hard drive...

Hey guys,

So I'm here studying for finals with my good ole' W3V. I turned it on about an hour ago, used it for about three minutes for some net stuff, then plugged it in to charge, left it on, and set it aside on a chair.

I was studying some stuff for about 20 minutes - maybe half an hour, and I needed the computer, so I went to pick it up. We all know these things get warm, but the bottom area (where the HDD is) literally almost burned my hand. It was HOT! So I quickly put it down and opened it up, looked at CHC to see a HDD temp of 72 deg. C! I very quickly shut the computer off and let it cool back down for like half an hour. Now I'm back on it, still plugged in and charging, and the CPU is at a slightly high (considering all I'm doing is browsing) 54 deg. C, and the HDD is back down at a comfortable 42 deg. C.

I've been using this thing for 4 months now, and I've never had this happen before. The only possible explanation I can think of is that I had it on a sofa-type chair, and there was no airspace between the bottom of the lappy and the chair cushion. But could that really have caused it to go up to 72 degrees? I mean, the thing was completely idle, not doing anything at all.

Thanks!
-Brian

 

I think the sofa type chair may have trapped heat around the HDD; notice that if you put it on a table, the rubber feet give the HDD at least a LITTLE room for air.

 

That's gotta be it. The intake is on the bottom by the HD (those long thin slots near the front, facing down). Cover those up and you'll see the temp spike. I was in class once and shoved a pile of papers under my notebook. 5 minutes later it turned off due to overheating. I was perplexed as to why, until I took a look at the papers blocking the intake.

At least, hopefully that is all it is...

 

That's my other question...

I had CHC set to warn me of HDD temp at 55 degrees, and I figured it would shut off shortly thereafter.

Why did this thing not shut itself off at a HDD temp of 72!??!?

 

HD's have pretty high heat tolerance,as under heavy usage, 55-65 degrees would be normal under normal conditions, such as defragging on a desk.

CHC/RHC has HD shut down if the temperature reaches 75 degrees

 

Wow, I'm surprised it's that high, wish there were a way to change it. I mean, it heated up the plastic and whatnot so much, I literally smelled something along the lines of melting plastic.

 

Hmm, melting plastic is not good....

 

Whooooooooa dude that's not a good sign at all, but wasn't there an issue with W3V's and their harddrive compartments not getting any ventilation?

Anyhoo' that is not a good thing indeedy, could be that you left it on a chair blocking vents, or something is not reporting temperatures correctly?

The harddrive compartment on my Z70Va has gotten "HOT" to the touch, but from the readings through software, has never reached past 55.

Wait I lied, it did once. It hit 56 and I got a warning. Since then nothing past that.

Check your unit out and be careful with where you place your laptop while lapping. People think you can just place it on any surface, but you must be more careful as to not block vents.

If you're running off battery power and have everything running at lower speeds, like cpu and gpu you should be fine using it with the vents partially blocked for a moderate period of time, but if you're using it at max performance settings I suggest placing it on a FLAT, hard surface.

Cheers,
Mike

 

I taped over the air vents on the front of my W3A to see the effect on its temperature. I ran a full virus scan and the HDD temperature got up to 52C with ambient temperature at 22C. The undervolted CPU was running in the 55C to 60C range.

The hottest I have ever seen my HDD was 62C when I ran the full Seagate diagnostics to check its health after Active SMART forecast death within a month. That was last May and the event hasn't yet happened. (It appears that Active SMART and Speedfan have a problem with the raw read error rate reporting for Seagate HDDs.). I should add that the 62C HDD temperature was in an ambient temperature of around 30C.

I have found that the normal operating temperature of the W3's HDD is 20 to 25C above ambient temperature.

John

 

FYI the melting point of ABS is 221 Deg F or 105 C. Its safe not to go above 90 C

 

Well it smelled like hot plastic, at least.

 

It's not the plastic that we're worried about, but the platters within the harddrive, as they have an operating temperature that if exceeded could cause the harddrive to fail.

Correct me if I'm wrong

Cheers,
Mike