Overheating notebook hardrive

Hello everyone!

I'm new to the forums, since I just bought my first laptop.
I've been a computer freak for several years know, but haven't had the need for a notebook untill recently, when i got accepted into the IT University of Copenhagen.

So I bought the HP Pavilion dv6415eo, since it seemed like a good deal.
I've been having a few problems though, especialy the whiny CPU noise was driving me up the wall, but thanks to your forums, I've managed to drown it.

But I have still got one problem: The harddrive!
It get's so hot, that the whole area south of the keyboard also gets blistering hot.
By fingers get all sweaty when using the touchpad, and my genitals get roasted when I've got it on my lap.
I would like to have kids at one point.
Speedfan tells me that it gets up to almost 60 degrees celsius.
I've called HP support, but they pretty much give a rats ass.

Time to take matters in to own hands!

The current harddrive is a SATA 160 GB Toshiba 5400 RPM HDD.
I've read in the forums that Toshiba uses the cheapest componets and bearings, and therefore, their harddrives get so hot.
Do you think I'll be able to find another harddrive, that wount burn away my fingers?

The size isn't that important, I'll even switch to 4200 RPM if that is what it takes.
I'm hearing that WD and Hitachi makes good HDDs, but will there be a substantially difference?
My notebook is propably making the problem worse, so I dont know if a HDD switch will be enough.

 

The Hp DV series always have hot hard drive for some odd reason. My brother's lappy is a HP and the hdd is a Hitachi and it is very hot, while I have a Toshiba 1234GSX and it never passed 46 degrees C yet.

 

Ok. Gues they just cram it into a space that is too tight.
But how hot does his get? Does the surface of the laptop get as hot as mine do you think?

Thx for the answer.

 

My Toshiba has a Hitachi 5400 HD and it barely gets warm.

 

If you keep you hands on it for more than like 2 or 3 minutes, it feels unconformable. same with on lap.

 

Darn it.
Not much hope then I guess.
Well, if I wanted the absolutely coolest HDD, what should I get?

 

A SSD hard drive? lol
I dunno which hard drives are good.

If you can still return/exchange it, I would do it. Get a different Hp or another brand. Not really practical to buy a new laptop and putting new parts into it right away.

When my bro's computer is idling in vista, the hdd probably 35-40 degrees on the surface(stupid hdd doesn't show the temp in hdd, speedfan etc), because vista is doing something all the time.

 

Yeah, a SSD HDD would be cool.

The problem is that I lost my receipt, and it will propably be difficult to return it. But I will propably give it a try though. If it doesn't work, I'll try to use a SD Flash card with Vista ReadyBoost. That will hopefully take some stress of the HDD. Will be almost like having a SSD HD

Thx for the help.

 

My laptop HDD never gets more than 39 degrees celcius and its a 7200rpm. That is one of the advantages of a 17 inch laptop

 

My notebook HDD never gets above 12C and it is 15,000RPM, does that help! I didn't think so! 60C is about 5 over the top of what is safe. Don't put the notebook on your lap and block vents! Airflow allows it to cool if you restrict it, it will get hotter! Fu** Speed fan! your HDD does not cover your entire K-board so do not give it so much credit. Install a diff app to monitor temps. Your CPU makes the most heat, why you think it is the HDD is beyound me. What I am saying is your CPU can't be so good and your HDD so bad, get an idea of what is going on. Sorry but somthing more complicated is going on. And for the record I got those HDD temps by being in a walk in freezer, my point is absolute temps don't mean sh**!

 

Wow, cool down boy.

The reason I think it is the harddrive is because it's so bloody hot exactly where the harddrive is placed, and when I open it up, and put a finger on the harddrive, I burn my fingers. Besides, Speedfan reads the HDD temperature by using the harddrives built in temperature monitor. My CPU is pretty toasty too, but it's placed aproximately beneath the right side of the keyboard, where it doesn't get very hot, since it is properly vented.

The space where the harddrive is placed isn't even vented, and it's a pretty tight fit, so I'm not shocked it gets that hot.

 

Ventilation helps the HDD temperature, particularly if cool air is sucked in over the HDD on its way to the CPU fan. However, most notebooks have unventilated HDD compartments but there is a wide range of HDD temperatures.

As for which HDDs run coolest? Logically, they should be the ones with the lowest power consumption: Study Tom's Hardware 2.5" HDD charts for idle and maximum power. It looks like the Toshiba 160GB 5400rpm SATA is one of the more power-hungry HDDs.

John

 

Baddogboxer is going too calm down. Mostly because it is not appreciated. You clearly fail to understand residual,sympathetic or dissipation of heat! Do what I said and see what is up.

 

And they don't provide any external venting for the hard drive cavity, so the heat gets trapped inside.

I have a dv9500t that shipped with a pair of Hitachi 7k100 drives. They were HOT HOT!! I replaced them with a pair of Hitachi 7k200 drives and they run much cooler now. Big difference.

Here's my hdd temps:

aeris # smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sda | grep Temp
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 107 107 000 Old_age Always - 51 (Lifetime Min/Max 23/60)
aeris # smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sdb | grep Temp
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 134 134 000 Old_age Always - 41 (Lifetime Min/Max 22/51)

Notice how one drive is 10 degrees warmer than the other; 41 degrees vs. 51 degrees. I don't know why, it likely sits next to some hot internal components or something. If you put your hands on the underside of the notebook, the one side feels warmer than the other.

I have them mirrored together in a RAID1, so when one drive fails (and I bet that hotter one fails first!) I'm still running with no data loss and no down time.

 

I do not understand why Hp put both the CPU and the HDD on the left side, they could have just moved it to the other side. Your left leg and hand will be sweating like crazy,and the other side, nothing.

On my Toshiba laptop, my HDD is under the right palm rest,and my CPU is at the top of my left palm rest.

 

If you're interested in getting the coolest HDD's with the lowest power consumption you'll need to look at Samsung (don't worry they fixed the performance with a firmware update) and Fujitsu harddrives. They are one of if not the coolest, quietest and lowest power consuming drives on the market.

 

Read the full content of this Article: http://www.dev.notebookreview.com/news/happy-world-backup-day/

 

you should really just settle for a cooling pad, but if u really want to then try your samsung or hitachi but i doubt it will drop 10C to make the difference you want

 

Well, I've bought the notebook for school, so a cooling pad would be a hassle to drag around wouldn't it? Don't know how small they get, but I'd prefer it if I could take care of the source of all the problems.

As said earlier, I'll be using a 4 gb SD card with Vista ReadyBoost, and that should also take some load of the HDD. That combined with a cooler harddrive will hopefully make a difference big enough.
My current harddrive IS one of the more power consuming ones. Uses 40% more power than the Samsung and Hitachi.

 

try the thermaltake ixoft, its foldable and easy to carry round.

i have a dv9000t and my primary drive heats up too about 50C idle and it isnt doing anything so i dont think readyboost is gonna help ya but who knows

 

Don't expect your 4Gig card to do anything for it's the indexing and defragging in the background that causes the heat.

I wouldn't listen to Tomshardware completely, check out www.storagereview.com they do nothing but harddrives. You might want to look at www.silentpcreview.com as they do a lot or reviews with notebook drives.

 

Well, both indexing and defragging can be turned off. The harddrive will almost always be accessed for the pagefile, which will be moved to the SD card. Maybe your right, but SD cards are cheap, and it certainly wount hurt.

I'll check out the links, thank you very much.

 

You shouldn't be paging all the time with 2 Gigs of RAM, even for Vista unless you're gaming or working with huge PSD files.