CF30 HDD heater - Is it really needed?

How worthwhile is the HDD heater?

Where I live is inland tropical, and doesnt really get that cold, and add a SSD to the mix and I am wondering if its worth my time to unplug the heater element in the caddy to maybe get a little more life out of the battery.

 

If the temperature does not get below freezing and you have a SSD, I would unplug it.

 

if it ever gets below freezing, it will be firmly tucked under the covers with me....

any idea how much of a drain the heater is on the battery?

 

Blair: Could you move this to the proper location?

From http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/safely-disabling-the-heater.618063/

Here are some initial test results:

SETUP1: Model CF-18 Mk1 (CF-18BEL01ME)
Battery on this individual is original (2003) and holds about 1h charge.

TEST1: froze the Toughbook overnight with battery. Freezer temp was -28C (-18F). Straight out of the freezer and power on:

The green power led came on momentarily for a few seconds and then went out. Repeat: same.

Plugged in the mains adaptor: power led came on and text appear under the still frozen screen (in BIOS font) "Warming up the harddrive. Please wait...". After about 1 minute Windows booted and everything seemed to function normally. Sensors showed motherboard temperature as +8C and harddrive as +10C.

SETUP2: Soldered parellal wires (Fluke 83 for voltage measurement) on the harddrive heat element's connector (showed 2 ohms resistive load) and also placed a thermocouple probe (Fluke 52) against the harddrive chassis.

TEST2: froze the Toughbook WITHOUT battery for the rest of the day. Plugged in the room temperature battery and powered on.

RESULT: The battery indicator led started blinking green and amber with a 1 second period. The voltage on the heat element also swiched between 4.66V and 0V with the same period. Display shows no text. The harddrive thermocouple temperature began to climb rapidly up from -25C at a rate of about 0.1-0.2C/sec.

After about 5 minutes, when the harddrive surface temperature was +1.2C Windows logo appeared and booted all the way to the desktop, only to give a battery warning and return to suspend state. Forced out of suspend back to desktop. Battery showed 8% charge left. Motherboard temp was +10C and harddrive +12C.

Plugged back to mains and did dignostic tests (with condensation melt dripping in and out of the chassis...

CONCLUSIONS:

The heater functions differently depending on if its mains plugged or battery powered.

- When mains plugged it supplies the heater element with full voltage (not measured but probably 10-12V, 50-75W) which heats up the harddrive to 0C more rapidly (in the test in one minute). Also the display is powered during the heating and shows the text "Warming up the harddrive. Please wait..."

- However when powered by a battery, it gives the heater only 5V or 12W of power and took about 5 minutes to warm up the battery to 0C. In this mode the warming up indication is given by blinking the battery led green and amber in a 1 second period.

- The battery charge required to heat up the harddrive from freezing (-25C) temperatures is less than 10% of its full (new) capacity.

- Therefore no need to disable the heater in SSD mods to save battery power.

- ...and Toughbooks RULE!!!

Sincerely Ransu

 

I had wondered if it was on all the time or not, I know the RH palmrest gets warmer than the LH one at times

 

No, just a few seconds at start up.

 

The heater will only come on when it's very cold. Not sure what temperature it has to be but if you live in a warm climate like Florida it's never going to come on. I live in Canada and it gets very cold here and I did a test once and I think the heater ran for 2 minutes then the Toughbook booted up. Also when I started the Toughbook up it gave me a warning but I just can't remember what it said. We have a thread on this somewhere. I did a test on my 19 or 30...it's been a while.

 

with the '30s i have seen the innards of , there are some switching supplies/regulator circuits under (what would be) the RH side of the palm rest .
this would account for the temperature differential ...
during/after charging and a short while after normal start-up .

 

SSD also need the heater in winter.
Samsung 850 Evo specs:
Temperature Operating: 0°C to 70°C

 

Some say yes but then some so no. I know when you buy a SSD kit (SSD + caddy) from Panasonic it has the heater installed. I bought a factory sealed kit a year or so ago and it was there to my surprise...for $50.00

 

I've had the CF-30 heater activate several times this past winter. I ended up warming it up by holding the caddy between my hands for a short while instead of wasting battery on the heater element.

I made or responded to a post somewhere here or TBT about SSD temperature tolerances. To put it simply, cold temperatures make read/writing to the NAND cells slightly slower and cause less bit errors but induce more wear. Hot temps makes read/writing faster, less wear on the cells but more error-prone.

Incidentally there are industrial-spec SSD drives that have wider temperature tolerances. They are usually specced at -40c to 85c

 

My heater would come on with my unit docked in my vehicle if I left it parked outside overnight in GA. I would suggest leaving it as is. I think the benefit outweighs the loss of of a little battery power. Just my .02 cents.

 

I agree with you. Panasonic put it there for a reason...leave it be.