[mythtv-users] hdd cooling

[Michael T. Dean]

On 02/16/2009 11:08 PM, Yan Seiner wrote:
> This is a bit OT, but...
>
> I have a case with a lot of hard drives.  They are stacked on top of
> and next to each other, not exactly an ideal situation.  The case
> holds only hard drives; no mobo.
>
> The drives in the middle of the pack got pretty hot - 48 deg.C was
> normal.  So I set about making changes.  First I blocked all the
> possible ways air could recirculate around the interior fans; any
> place that would allow air to go from the exhaust to the intake of the
> fan was blocked.  Then I set about plugging all exterior holes and
> vents that would allow air to get in the case without going over the
> fans.  This got results; temps dropped from 48 to 44.
>
> So I went further; I taped over all of the holes in the back of the
> case; the PCI slot covers, the vent holes above the PCI slots, all of
> that got blocked.  The case looks like crap with blue masking tape and
> cardboard all over it, but the temps are now down to 37 to 39 C.
>
> Moral of the story: modern cases provide lots of ventilation, but when
> you need to draw air over your drives, study how the air gets in and
> out of the case.  :-) 

Admittedly, I know nothing of cooling/ventilation in computers nor of
HDD's, but since the Google labs study (
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf ) seemed to suggest
that temperature did not play a role in drive failure, could this be
doing more harm than good?  I would think that pulling air across the
HDD's would encourage dust to get into places it doesn't belong.

I've been letting my HDD's run hot, and airflow is generally induced by
convection in my cases, but I've been wondering if I should do more
about getting proper airflow, and if so, how to determine what is proper.

Mike