7811 Hard Drive Too Hot

My 7811 temps are fine with the exception of the hard drive. While idle, the hard drive floats around 52. Under very heavy load (virus scan, defrag), it gets as high as 65. Is this somewhat similiar to what others see?

I'm aware of an earlier thread pasting a conversation with Gateway technical support discussing the hard drive temperature and Gateway stating anything under 70 should be safe. Since Seagate themselves state 60C is the maximum operating temperature, I don't buy into this statement by a random Gateway chat support representative.

Of all the temperatures I worry about, the hard drive temperature worries me the most. If a CPU or GPU overheat and dies, it sucks, and in a laptop it means sending it aware for repair. But at least your data is safe. With a HD, unless you're ghosting it daily or weekly (which, honestly, is not a bad idea), if your HD overheats and dies, you lose your data.

I've also read that some 250GB 5400rpm drives actually uses more power and runs slightly hotter than some 200GB 7200RPM drives, so downgrading to a 5400 rpm drive doesn't seem to guarantee a cooler temperature.

That being said, does anyone have any suggestions on how to cool down the hard drive? I'm using a lapinator.com Lapinator Plus, which isn't necessarily designed to subsantially cool the laptop (there are no fans), but it is very comfortable to use in my lap and raises the back of the laptop. Are there any really good notebook coolers that are COMFORTABLE TO USE IN YOUR LAP and help reduce the HD temps? Obviously the hard drive cover design isn't great, which I'm sure affects the HD temperature.

At this point, it almost seems like the safest bet is just sticking out the high temperatures and getting an external drive to do weekly backups with. Any better solutions? I do regular backups anyway, but not full on cloning, and I do NOT want to deal with reinstalling every app individually if the hard drive does overheat and die!

 

well mine is a 250gb 5400rpm it does not get any hotter than 48c (no cooler)
i have a zalman nc-1000 (the nc-2000 should do better) it seems to drive the hdd temps about 5-10c down, doesnt do much for cpu/gpu.

 

I've noticed the same problem in my 6860fx which is probably designed the same way as yours. The HDD's are installed in an enclosed area that isolates them from external airflow which means they can't be cooled with fans unless you want to mod the case yourself.

I decided to RAID mirror my HDD's as a result of the cooling problem so as to reduce the chance that an HDD breakdown would cause any harm.

Something else I noticed which might help -- undervolting the CPU can substantially lower your system temps. There is a guide on this site that explains how to do it: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=235824.

I've noticed a significant decrease in system temps across the board, except that since moving to a RAID setup I can no longer get HWMonitor to show the HDD temps for some reason; my guess is that they are lower too. When your temps are as high as they are, every bit will help.

As for backing up the system, I got a good deal at BestBuy on an upgrade to Vista Ultimate. Business and Ultimate make full system backups a cakewalk; in fact, you can download MS Desktop Deployment (for free) and make complete, relatively easy to update, external installation images of your system -- drivers and apps.

 

I would suggest placing lean cuisines under your notebook directly under the hard drive when it gets to hot. Take them out of the freezer, let them lowers its temp a bit, then put them back in. Rotate them out.

or buy a notebook cooler lol

 

Can anyone prove a notebook cooler has lowered their hard drive temperature a significant amount? Since most notebook coolers have fans towards the back of the laptop, and nothing towards the front where the only small vent for the hard drives is located, I don't know how big a difference that would make.

On top of that, there are so few notebook coolers that are big enough for a 17" laptop, and the only one that seems to get good ratings is $70 (the NZXT Cryo), I'm hoping for some kind of verification\proof before I drop $70 on a cooler that may or may not work, and doesn't look particularly comfortable to use in your lap.

 

Most people say just to prop the back end of the laptop up the problem there is the little vents that barely cool the HDs are now covered even more because of the angle the machine is on now. so what i did was made a board and screwed down 4 bottle caps where the feet are and i have never had my drives run that hot . drive one usually in the 50 degrees range and drive 2 the 320/7200 in the 45ish range.

 

This is something I noticed as well. I love the comfort of my Lapinator Plus, but I think I'm going to stick something on it so that it lifts the laptop up from all corners (much like you did). Hopefully that makes a difference!

UPDATE

I tried lifting up the front of the laptop and just did a quick install of a couple of games, and it still got up to 60C. I imagine if I kept doing more, it'd still keep going up. I have the feeling those vents must not do much, considering there is no fan of any kind to move the air out from the tiny compressed hard drive storage areas.

I did install a secondary hard drive. I'm thinking about uninstalling it and checking the temps again. Perhaps having two hard drives in there is just generates a bit too much heat?

 

Okay, after removing the second hard drive I installed, my maximum temperature has been 58.

How are people that have RAID setup with two hard drives keeping their temperatures at a reasonable level? I can't imagine even a notebook cooler would take a hard drive from 65 to 60.

I guess the design of the laptop just isn't very friendly for two hard drives, unless you happen to upgrade both of those hard drives to much cooler running hard drives?

 

Actually for some reason my older 6831fx had a way lower HD temp (45C idle and 53-55C max) with NO notebook cooler. That was with the stock 250G/5400rpm and a Hitachi 200G/7200rpm HD. But my new 7811fx would generate temperature like the OP which is around 58C idle and over 65C under load (the highest i saw was 69C and it was still climbing up, I was so scared and I shut down the computer immediately) I have also noticed the same Hitachi HDD i put in the 7811fx would be slightly cooler than the stock Seagate 200G/7200rpm, but the Hitachi is still way hotter than when it was in the 6831fx (around 54-56C idle and 63-64C under load) (I have already exchanged it at bestbuy, but both the original and the 2nd one have the same problem) There's no way the HD will make it more than a year with this kind of temperature...now i am kinda regretted on selling my 6831fx....

 

Have you tried just putting your 250gb\5400rpm drive in by itself to see the temperatures you get? Has anyone found a good website that compares laptop hard drive temperatures? I'd almost consider replacing the stock hard drive with a nicer hard drive if I could find one that is known to run cooler.

 

After some quick research, a good example would be the WD 320gb\5400rpm Scorpio. In benchmarks it often gets very close or surpasses the Seagate that comes with the 7811. I just can't find any benchmarks to indicate whether the drive itself tends to run cooler than the Seagate.

 

how about an Intel X25-M SSD ?

 

For the additional price of a SSD, I could've just ordered a Sager. I went with the 7811 because I was trying to keep costs low. I understand a low cost gaming laptop such as the 7811 won't be perfect, but I would hope for temperatures that aren't going to destroy the drive in 6 to 8 months!

 

well, unfortunately, those of us with RAID setups can't tell you an exact number, i will say that the right palm rest does get rather warm. if im not doing anything overnight, i put my computer to sleep, but if i have to run a virus scan or something, ill leave the lid open enough so that the screen goes off but there is still room for it to 'breathe' if you will.

before i installed the second hard drive, my max HD temp without cooler was around 50C. with cooler, around 44C.

 

I second everything diablo said.