OT-HD External Enclosure and Heat...

Sol M. wrote on 10/28/2003, 4:55 AM
I've recently picked up a Maxtor 200GB drive (DiamondMax Plus 9,8MB cache). I've been using it as an internal drive, and when running, I've noticed that it gets quite hot to the touch (to the point that it's too hot to continue touching for too long).

I would like to place it in an external enclosure (Firewire/USB 2.0), but I am worried about heat issues as most of the newer enclosures are fanless.

I know many Vegas users use external enclosures for editing with. Does anyone have any info/experiences with large/hot drives and enclosures?

Thanks!

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 10/28/2003, 10:01 AM
That may beTOO hot! A hard drive can be "warm" to the touch, but if you can't comfortablly keep your hand there for more than 10 seconds or so something may be wrong. In other words it should be a comfortable warm. Warm in the context I'm using it is maybe a bit more than the water you'd use for a baby's bath, not so "warm" actually hot you'd feel if you kept your hand under one of those washroom hand driers after several runs for example.

Oh... by the way I have several big drives, both Maxtor and WD and they run "warm" meaning if I had one running all day and take it out of the case it doesn't come close to being hot. I'd call Maxtor and see what they have to say. A hot running drive is usually a bad sign. But hot, warm are such subjective terms one person's idea of hot may be another person's idea of just warm. I'm talking too much...
Jsnkc wrote on 10/28/2003, 10:06 AM
The only reason I could see for using an external drive is if you needed to edit the same files on more than one computer, other than that I would just stick with a lot of internal drives. They seem to cause a lot less problems from everything I have read.
pb wrote on 10/28/2003, 10:56 AM
External drives are essentail of you need huge amounts of storage and want to avoid SCSI (I think). This PC has a 200 gig internal SCSI and a couiple of 32 externals. Also has Lacie 200 gig firewire externals. None are hot. At home one of my machines has a 200 GIG INTERNAL IDE media drive, not big enough. Supplemented with two 200 gig Lacies and a 60 gig Maxtor (piece of sh*t - avoid that make! Nothing gets too hot and I really do need the extra 450 gigs storage.
busterkeaton wrote on 10/28/2003, 11:10 AM
Does anyone know if bigger drives run hotter?
riredale wrote on 10/28/2003, 11:26 AM
Busterkeaton:

I'm not in the HD industry, but from what I've read, there are several factors about heat:

(1) rotation speed
It takes more energy to spin the disks faster.

(2) Number of platters
A 3-platter drive will generally be hotter than a 2-platter drive, because there is more air resistance, thus more motor spinning it.

This would imply to me that a 120GB drive made 3 years ago will run a LOT hotter than one made today, simply because back then they needed multiple platters, and now it can be done with one. I have an 80GB Seagate about 18 months old that you can fry eggs on; I also have a new WD 200GB drive that is just warm to the touch.


Jive:
I have a removable enclosure mounted in an ADS Pyro firewire box. The back of the Pyro box has a cooling fan, as does the removable enclosure I installed inside it.

The Pyro box was not "designed" to hold a removable enclosure, but it works. In this fashion, I can quickly plug in any of a number of drives, and then plug the assembly into the PC via firewire.
BillyBoy wrote on 10/28/2003, 3:00 PM
Couldn't help myself:

http://www.fox.com/kingofthehill/
pb wrote on 10/28/2003, 3:13 PM
Lacies have cooling fans built in to their enclosures, thus keeping them cool. I take back what I said aboput Maxtors in general; mine is a particularly nasty one but it is always my bad luck to get the defective unit in the batch. This applies to my BetaSP 2650 which never worked properly, a DSR 20 which still doesn't like full size DVCAM tapes ad nauseam.
JumboTech wrote on 10/28/2003, 4:21 PM
Well I just lost my second WD drive in less than a year, I think, a 120 GB. I had had one fan directed towards the three drives that I use in my main PC but after that recent failure, I went ahead and bought some Vantec hard drive coolers from NewEgg. (See link, hopefully it works). They were $7.75 each in lots of ten including shipping and are quiet and very effective. (More each, of course if you buy less than ten because of the shipping). They attach to the underside of the drive. Probably won't help the external users, of course. I liked the earlier post about frying eggs on your HD. That's been my experience as well. Funny to imagine yourself as the owner of a grill - "A burger and two eggs, please". "Sure just let me get Vegas going on a hard render so that I can get those eggs just right!".

http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=35-888-105-07.jpg/35-888-105-03.jpg

Regards...

Al
Sol M. wrote on 10/28/2003, 5:27 PM
I guess I should get this drive checked out then. The heat this drive produces is definitely hotter than what you'd want to "use for a baby's bath".

As a side note, the "d2" Lacie's are fanless, though they are used (and praised) by a lot of users primarily as a media drive. Should they be avoided?

Thanks for the info!
pb wrote on 10/29/2003, 12:50 AM
You are right! There is no airflow from the grills at the back of them. Silly me. The SCSI externals have fans though.
farss wrote on 10/29/2003, 1:02 AM
Cooler is always better but I wouldn't get too obsessed about it.
If you're going to use fans think about filtering the air. Without it after a few months running the built up dust will reduce the cooling effect no end.

And a tip. A lot of the filter units you can buy are very badly designed. The type of fans they go on don't like negative inlet pressure, this reduces the air density so the fan is spinning itself into a vacuum. Try to have a spacer between the fan and the filter, makes a huge difference. And clean the filters. When you do you'll see why I made this suggestion
B_JM wrote on 10/29/2003, 10:03 AM
just yesterday a client supplied firewire drive suddenly went off line and smelled of hot electronics .. i pulled the drive out of the case (it was one of the types with no fan - which there many of these days) , a samsung 7200rpm 80gig drive... let it cool down and hooked it back up to the case (with out cover) .. 34,000 image seq in 2k res -- gone .. drive reported not even formated ...

used ontrack data recovery -- and found out drive had been formated on a mac or partition magic in fat32 (which allows greater that 32gig partitions, unlike windows) and i could only pull data off the first 32 gigs ... the rest was just completly gone --- in less than 1 sec ...

that represented several weeks of rendering ... now i am awaiting word that of course they did have a back up (ive had many clients send me the original drives or dlt's before with no back up) ..

moral of the story -- get your clients to agree that you can pull apart thier firewire cases (and void warrenty) if no fan .. dont use no-fan firewire cases no mater how nice they look ... keep your drives cool at all costs ..
Caruso wrote on 11/1/2003, 2:49 AM
I have experienced no problems at all with my Maxtor enclosures of which I have three. They each came supplied with 80 gig drives. I have since opened those cases numerous times to swap the supplied drives with other off the shelf internal drives.

Never had a problem. I stack them on top of my processor, and, just now checked. The top case is cool, but, the two bottom cases are quite warm to the touch (I don't have to pull my hand away, however).

Been running various drives in these cases for a couple of years now, stacked as I have them now.

There are airflow openings in the front and along the sides of these cases. I'm just guessing that Maxtor new what they were doing when they developed the design.

I also have two ads enclosures. These have fans. I've never had a drive fail in them, either, although, the reason I have two ADS is because the first one failed after about six months (installed HD's would spin up, but not be recognized by the computer - something wrong with some hardware component at the back of the case). I shipped the unit off per mfr's instructions, but grew impatient in the interim and bought another unit. Mfr fixed (replaced) the original and sent it back to me - no charge - no questions asked as to when I purchased it - totally hastle free. Service was rendered in the allotted time - for what these units cost, I didn't want to be without one for the two or three weeks it took them to process my claim.

Anyhow, I do a lot of recording/editing away from home, and regularly stuff these drives along with my aging but, so far, reliable 900mhz processor into my trunk for transport to the recording site.

Perhaps I'm just lucky, but I've never had a HD problem. It's certainly not uncommon for me to leave these drives stacked up and running overnight. Not advocating that anyone else do the same, and I can't explain why others have had failures, the above is just my experience.

Caruso