hard drive temps and failure rates????

found this in the hard drive wiki

Hard disk drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

i have always heard the opposite....

 

Hence why I won't trust Wikipedia without some corraborating articles. The source that the section cites is from 2007.

 

Well, considering the amount of heat generated by most HDDs, the starting or ambient temperature you'd need for an average temperature of below 27 degrees is pretty low. In fact, I think it's low enough that the fluidic bearings in most hard drives will be more likely to seize up, which would leave you with a burned out drive motor. We had a thread here somewhere a while ago on operating a notebook in sub-zero weather; if I remember right, the general consensus was that once you got it warmed up, it would probably be fine, but starting it was likely to be a problem. And batteries drain ridiculously quickly in cold weather.

 

Heat is the enemy of all computer components. All my hard drives in my desktops have tons of airflow on them to keep them as cool as possible.

 

except if it's not, tsunade_hime. how do you know? what do you know what the optimal operating temperature for your hdd is? i remember googles study, and it was over thousands of hard drives troughout their server farms (they use ordinary hdds, not server grade ones). and the conclusion was clear, temperature doesn't really matter. and if, then warm is better (but not by much).

what kills a hdd is movement. heat doesn't matter much.

 

Really? Are you saying heat plays no role in the premature death of components?

 

Actually there was a study conducted a while back, I am too lazy to look for it but basically high temperatures are not as dangerous as fluctuation in temperatures, for example going from 35c-50c when the computer is in use is far more harmful them a hard drive being in 50c temperatures 24/7. This is because of the hard drives mechanical design, and the materials involved. Remember heat expands materials, and the cold shrinks them. By repeatedly fluctuating the materials, some of the sensitive parts of the hard drive can be off set causing issues with the function of the drive. In other words hard drives should be put at very low tolerance in temperatures, like keeping it always within 5 degrees in variation~, whether it's 50c-55c, or 30c-35c.

Case in point one of our customer's horribly designed XPS mini tower's was designed so the hard drive was seated right behind the heat sink, with a fan blowing the cooling air through the heatsink directly AT the hard drive.
This causes fluctuating temperatures of 38c-60c on the hard drive, this was what we measured due to the the hard drive being bad and the obvious blatant horrible design.

When we told the customer that their hard drive had died, and the reason being the really bad design of their computer they had told us they knew something odd was going on because they had replaced the hard drive 5 times with a brand new hard drive already since they had purchased it like 2 years before. This would of been their 6th time.

Anyways hope that helps.

 

What level ? I am sure I am going to die(cooked) if you put me in an oven but would be fine in Africa. Well may be losing a few months of life earlier than I am in a 25c area.

 

so you compare Africa with an oven ... LOL

but I agree that changing temperature is far more harmful than constant temperature for the HDD where you have different components that will shrink/expand at different rate (with that constant temp being in the specifications range)

 

Of course temperature extremes will lead to a premature death of components, but in the general operational temperatures, I doubt it will make a difference in life span (ie. 25 deg C vs 35 deg C). The biggest difference as stated is rate and amount of temperature change.

 

lol my 2 hard drives are at 33C and 27C... but I don't really see how that can damage the components. (24C ambient)