Normal Hard Drive Temps

My hard drive temperature in my laptop has been hitting 50+ C a lot recently, and it feels hot. Is this normal? I've had this laptop for over a year now. It's in my signature.

 

Not sure about your laptop, but 50°C is a touch high.
Generally they tend to run in their 40ies...

Are you vents potentially clogged up by dust?

(I needed to remove the fan to get at a layer of dust in an old laptop my mother owned)

 

With no active cooling:

40c and below are cool temps which is a plus for the HD's life

40-55 is normal operating temps

55-65c is the hot zone

My sisters 160gb Fujitsu drive always ran at like 55-65c which are critical temps. Surprisingly its still alive even after a year of regular use.

Anyway try reducing the unnecessary running processes which put more load on the HD.

 

Yeah, come to think of it, I've haven't blown out my vents lately. Thanks for the reminder.

Thanks for the temperature info. It just feels uncomfortable seeing it go that high.

 

Well I would call around 40°C normal on a laptop with working vents - at least its true for 3 of our laptops...

And higher for blocked vents...

 

Rather than general guidelines, one could check the manufacturer's operating specifications, especially given that different models are rated to run fine at specific temperature ratings. Generally, however, lower temperatures are better for components; the catch is that after a certain point, cooler temperatures have no beneficial effect on component lifetimes, and this has to be factored in with the manufacturers specs.

This is why some people (not mentioning anyone specifically here or anything) are so foolish to be obsessing over lower temperatures.

 

I know that I have a Seagate Momentus hard drive. I'll run over to the Seagate website to see what they say. Oh, and thanks Bog.

EDIT: I looked at the specification pdf file and they say that ambient temps shouldn't exceed 65C. So, I am okay.

 

My 5K500.B right now sits at 37C, browsing and watching MP3 files.

 

That temperature doesn't mean much without a reference temperature (ambient room temperature).

 

HD temps are always reported incorrectly. Either way 50c is fine.

 

Oh boy, I need to show you some screenshots of my hdd!! You'll fall off your chair (because I have a NP8662 whose hdd idles at 48c, and I'm a lucky one )

To the OP.. The Sager Np866x owners all have hdds idling around 45c to 55c, and a couple of guys have theirs running in the mid 60s while in high use. But I haven't heard yet of an hdd failure (except some faulty ones from the start)

 

Hmm, my mother's laptop had such "warm" HDDs, because the fan was clogged up... (wonder how she does that)

Cleaning:
From high forties to low forties/high thirties.

Hmm...

 

ok i got a question.. My hard drive temps have increased quite a lot... might be because fan is clogged etc... how do you clean it? it is in a Hp portect smart enclosure in the notebook...

 

...what's in the "protect enclosure" - the HDD?

You don't need to clean the HDD if its dust related, just the general cooling system.

So vents - mainly the key "outgoing" vent with the heatsink and the fan itself.

 

ok forget it... i'll just blow some compressed air through the hard drive vents.. hope that works...

 

Try the fan first.

 

Where did you get that it shouldn't exceed 65°C?

According to either Momentus data sheets ( 7200.4 or 5400.6), the max operating ambient temp is 60 °C. But still yours is inside the safe zone.