NP9261: Second Harddisk Failure

This Sager is killing my Hitachi Travelstar Harddisks: in March this year my 100GB 7200 rpm stopped booting and today my 200GB gave me a BSOD.

Both disks stopped booting and were not accessible.

Any clues?

 

Had you been monitoring the temps? If so, what were they?

 

No but that could be a cause. My room temperature was very modest 20 degrees Celsius.

What would be the best/coolest place for the boot disk: on top of the battery or in the double disk pack?

Mine have been in the double disk pack - one of those disks is used as a backup.

 

I've seen one or two posts (a while back, unfortunately) suggesting that the drives, when stacked in the two-drive setup, are a little too close to each other for 7200s to operate comfortably, without a good notebook cooler. It would probably be best to put the hottest drive in the 1-drive slot under the battery, and the second and third hottest in the 2-drive stack, and, if all three are 7200s, make sure you keep an eye on drive temps, follow Gophn's cleaning guide religiously (i.e., more often than the 3-months he recommends) and always use a cooler.

 

Thanks shyster, I will replace my boot disk under the battery!
All my disks are 7200's

 

Just make sure you check first to see which one(s) seem to be running hottest.

 

done that:

- the pair of drives in the stack (two Hitachi Travelstars 200GB, 7200 rpm) are idling at 55 and 58 degrees celsius
- the Seagate Momentus, also 200GB @ 7200 rpm, seems to be very cool: 37 degrees celsius

I intend to swap the Seagate with my OS Disk and if 58 degrees is too warm, I may consider to kick one Travelstar out.

 

I have two Seagates stacked... seems fine.

I also optimize my OS settings to not have unneeded access to the drives to keep them cooler.

Read this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=292702

its relevant to all notebooks.

 

Just to be sure, I removed one of my drives. So now:

- Seagate Momentus 200GB 7200 rpm is above battery and runs at 34 degrees Celsius
- Hitachi Travelstar 200GB 7200 rpm (OS-Disk) is alone in the stack and runs at 45 degrees Celsius

Quite an improvement, because my OS-Disk was running above 60 degrees Celsius...

And Gophn, thanks for this link for I may consider to apply those settings and bring my third drive into play again!

 

I put a 5400 rpms on a 7200 without a cooling pad. The temperature on both went over 60. ON the other hand I saw people with 2 hdd at 7200 in RAID setting and there were not complaining. In my opinion it is not enough space top put them in the primary hdd bay.

Now that they are in separate bays and with a cooling pad the temps are 35 for each.

If you do not have a cooling pad, try to lift the back of the laptop for 2-2.5 cm and check the temps on long term.

PL