Hard drive heat?

Anyone else have excessively hot hard drives?

I went to use my machine today, ran a quick run on 3DMark Sky Dive and had HWMonitor running to monitor my temps... I noticed that my palm rest was warm so I checked my hard drive temperature... One is at 47C and the other is at 48C doing absolutely nothing (I use my SSDs for everything but storage of my videos which I'm not currently watching). They are normally 36 to 37!

This isn't the first time I've seen the machine do this, I rebooted last time and it fixed it but it doesn't appear to be doing it this time.



As you can see in that image, its actually gone UP since I rebooted! I'm going to shut the machine down... but these hard drives are going to fail at those temperatures aren't they? :\

 

On my W370ET, the second hard drive bay is located right above the PCH chip. Guess what - 66-69'C temps for the HDD even when not in use.

The solution: I moved the HDD to the optical caddy bay, there it stays cool ~30-35'C.

Anything above 45'C for a HDD is not recommended.

 

According to manufacturer's specification the Travelstar 7K1000 can operate in temperatures ranging from 0C to 60C.
Travelstar 7K1000 | HGST Storage
I have this HDD in my P170EM, it has never exceeded 44C, even on a warm day (~28C) and after defragmentation + anti-virus scan (not counting super hot days like mid Feb last year, when it was 46C here in Sydney ).

 

That's really retarded... I have to give up my Bluray burner if I want a cooler hard drive... What a design flaw.

Its odd though... It normally sits much lower. In fact when I powered off the machine and let it cool down, powering it back up the system froze at POST, I turned it off and back on and now the drives are idling as they were before - 28 and 29C respectively.

I wonder if there isn't a firmware problem with this system because like I said, this has happened before and restarting the computer fixed it the last time. This time I had to power it off completely but now its fine.

Yeah... Operation is different from reliability though. I guess I'll have to keep an eye on it. Usually my drives stay right around 30C when they aren't being used and like yours, don't go past mid 40s when in use.

 

What temps are good or bad? Are you overheating?

Idle temperatures are varied in most notebooks. The reasoning behind this is due to their different thermal designs and low-level programming for fans.

Danger zone (high) temperatures are pretty standard due to manufactures low-level specifications of usage. Danger temps are set to downclock the component such as the CPU or GPU in order to cool the component down enough to prevent overheating

Here are temperatures for specific components when they enter the danger zone.:

CPU danger temperature is around 75-85C (check the CPU's specifications)
GPU danger temperature is around 90-95C
HDD danger temperature is around 60-65C

Threshold temperatures are also pretty standard once again due to the reasons specified under the danger zone temperatures. These temperatures are the most dangerous to a system, in which permanent hardware damage can be incurred if the user does not remedy the heat issue during which time the user is experiencing temperatures within the danger zone. Systems that have a component that reaches threshold temperatures will usually crash or shutdown when the temperature peaks.

CPU threshold temperature is around 90-100C (and above)
GPU threshold temperature is around 100-105C (and above)
HDD threshold temperature is varied, but above 65C is bad

Safe temperatures are temperatures are basically any temperature below the danger zone temperatures. Even a 5C-10C difference is ok as long as it stays below the danger zone temperatures.

If it is not a new system when a it enters the danger zone, it is a red flag to do some serious cleaning of dust from the vents and fans (guide below) or to be aware that you may be blocking vents on the bottom or side, which is restricting the airflow. Only use notebooks on hard, flat, clean surfaces. Never use a notebook on a lap, couch, bed, or other soft surfaces.

If it is a new notebook and it is reaching danger zone or threshold temperatures it is recommended you contact the vendor of your notebook.

 

CPU danger temperature has got to be a lot higher for Haswell. Set with a 57W TDP, this chip will go til it hits 85C and doesn't throttle until it passes 90C (95C was when I saw it if I remember correctly).

The thing is... its fine now. I'm starting to think there's a firmware issue and unfortunately, Clevo isn't well known for fixing those...

This is the temp now



And yes, this is a new machine. I got it on the 21st of May...

 

Those temps aren't too bad, IMHO, though it is weird that they went up significantly for no apparent reason. Sometimes, indexing, pagefile.sys, scanning, defrag or trimming can be a bit sneaky and push the drives here and there, but I suppose it really wasn't the case.

<rant>
At least you don't have an Intel 525 mSata. Right now, at idle , it is sitting at 62ºC on my P150EM. Hottest component in the chassis by far. When copying large files, it can go well beyond the 70ºC Intel specifies as being safe (it went to near 90ºC without shutting down, throtling and whatnot, during the installation of Windows 8). Wish it were a lemon. It isn't...
</rant>

 

Whatever it is that is causing it, it is causing the system not to POST when I shut down the machine when it is happening. It POST but the circle for UEFI Windows booting doesn't start. It happened again and again I shut the machine off and turned it back on. Now I've switched to power saver mode so that I can go to bed and have TV streaming and the fan is running non stop (although quietly) - I didn't notice that the fans had stopped running both times that it's gotten hot this morning. I wonder if something in the EC got messed up and changing profiles fixes it? I changed it back to high performance and the fan is staying on which is the behavior I've gotten used to with this machine.

I really hope this machine doesn't take a dump, its not even a month old and RMA will not make me a happy camper in the slightest.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

When you boot you access the HDD a lot as it loads the OS, so the temp being higher after a reboot is not surprising.

 

Actually I don't access the HD hardly at all, its not a boot drive and nothing that loads at boot is stored on there. I use my SSDs for boot and programs, the two drives are just for data.

Anyway, since the profile switch, the fan behavior went back to normal and I've had the laptop running HDMI to my TV while I slept this whole time (which all the TV programs are on one of the HD's) and the temp is 32C