w7j harddrive so hot? any solution apart from a cooling pad?

Hey guys, its like not even summer yet, and my harddrive gets so hot. Is there a driver i can change or something to fix this? ive resorted to turning off prefetch, superfetch, readyboost and anything that uses the hardrive in the background like diskeeper (defrag).

Windows vista
core 2 duo 7200 2ghz
1gb ram
go 7400 nvidia 128
120gb hitachi HTS541612J9SA00 sata

it gets really hot.. ive got RM Clock to undervolt and set my cpu to the lowest multiplier.
idle: 48-49 degrees, and if i got something sucking at it, it goes up to 55 degrees.

Please help =/

 

55C in a small form factor like the W7, on use, is more or less normal (but some might say a touch on the warm side) for this model; I know, other newer Asus systems are generally cooler but this is the W series we're talking about. My HDD in the W3 chassis regularly will go into the mid 50s during extended use - has to do with the smaller airflow patterns inside the box, and all the heat generating stuff that's crammed in there. I set my HDD alarm for 65C and stopped worrying about it a long time ago. Asus models tend to run warmer than others like Dell, Sony, etc - it's all about engineering, internal components and airflow.

The undervolting and background access changes you've made won't affect much, since the former only reduces the additional heat the CPU generates and has to be expelled by the fan on access (but the C2D usually spends most of it's time at the lowest multiplier regardless of anyone's use pattern, so locking it there isn't likely to do a great deal) and the latter just stops HDD active use (but the drive is still spinning and generating the heat that makes). Plus, you've got a discrete gpu in there heating the air up and spilling a little over to the HDD. The only thing you can do, if the HDD temps really bother you, is set the HDD to spin down after a certain period of non-use; I wouldn't expect that to do much as far as heat generation goes, and some would argue causes more wear on the drive because it has to repeatedly spin up every time you want to access info on it.

BTW, my guess is that a cooling pad is unlikely to have more than a 5% impact on HDD temps in the W7.

 

damn thats a bummer -_- if i'd known i wouldn't have bought this notebook, ive got the worst case of sweaty fingers. would change the harddrive effect this much? i was googling and i saw the hitachi travelstar 5k100 or something has low heat dissipation.

 

The differential in heat generation between different model HDDs is slight - the problem is that it's inside a little box with defined airflow patterns. Lower heat dissipation is the last thing you want, that would tend to increase operating temps even more. Lower heat generation is better, but unfortunately I doubt any 5400+ rpm drive is going to get you operating temps in the low 40s or below inside the W7.....

You could also try to run the gpu in power saving mode to minimize the clock speed and heat generation it makes, that's about the only other option you have to minimize system temps (besides using it on a hard, flat surface obviously ).

 

My computer is just sitting here (W3j) and hasn't been doing much, but its in the 35 range. As I use it more it will heat up, but if you are certain that you don't have something running your drive full bore (check the light), then I agree with ClearSkies. Either a 4200RPM (probably won't be drasticly different) or an SSD. With SSD expect to spend big bucks for little GBs. They are cool and low power, but very expensive still. Keep in mind that where the hard drive is there is only a tiny amount of space covering it, while some computers might have a 1/4" of material, you have probably half of that, you will feel the heat. If my V6j hard drive warmed up it was crazy because of the thin aluminum over it. Cool it down, though, and it felt so good!

You can try running in a Linux environment or a fresh windows install and see if that makes a difference, but ClearSkies is probably dead on with what he said.