effects of overheating

mo786 · Post by **mo786** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 4:41 pm

Hi
I have a Samsung 400gb SATA HDD.

What are the possible side effects of overheating from being in the scythe silent box?

Current temp is 41degres but it is not screwed on - I took it out before and it felt pretty hot - I suppose 45degrees - 50degrees is teh max it woudl hit.

I ask because last night (afetr about 2 months of being in the box) - the HDD started making accessing files VERY slowa nd then it would randomly freeze the computer.

I know its not a software probleem coz i tried reinstallaing windows and it was still going slow - currently using on old HD will all other hardware the same and it is fine

So could all that heat be causing these problems?

And while I am here does anyone know any decent WINDOWS BASED software I can use to run error checking on the drive while I have my PC on for normal use (something to force the temp up whilst checking would be ideal i spose)

thanks

tehfire · Post by **tehfire** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 8:51 pm

I'm not sure about symptoms coming straight from overheating, but if the excess heat is causing the hard drive to fail...you'd get much slower access times, grinding noises, freezes, and the like. I'd go to the manufacturer's website and see if they have a diagnostic utility for the hard drive, although most of the time those utilities won't detect anything even if there is a problem with your drive.

Hope for a warranty?

Shusher · Post by **Shusher** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 9:09 pm

Assuming the drive has S.M.A.R.T. support, I'd look at the fail rate stats. It might show an unusually high rate of errors. There are 3 particular smart measures I'd look at:

UDMA_CRC_Error_Count
Seek_Error_Rate
Raw_Read_Error_Rate

CRC is probably the least meaningful as even working drives can have a fair amount of CRC errors (several hundreds) but if it's something like 10k, that's definitely too high.

The other 2 should be near zero if the drive is healthy.

As for your temps... I don't know what Samsung's temp ratings are but 50C doesn't seem outrageous for an HDD, and I believe I read somewhere on this forum that the recent Samsungs do run pretty hot so the performance may not be due to the heat, maybe you got a faulty drive to begin with.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 1:05 am

I don't know what Samsung's temp ratings are but 50C doesn't seem outrageous for an HDD

actually that's pretty close to max operating temp which is 60C for that HDD. Given inaccuracy of HDD temp sensors it could be at 53/54C which is definitely too hot.

mo786 · Post by **mo786** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 2:22 am

thanks

got a warranty and i had a drive repalced when i first bought it and samsung were good about it - dont fancy sending another one back tho - especialy if its down to the scythe box.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 2:15 pm

jaganath wrote:
I don't know what Samsung's temp ratings are but 50C doesn't seem outrageous for an HDD
actually that's pretty close to max operating temp which is 60C for that HDD. Given inaccuracy of HDD temp sensors it could be at 53/54C which is definitely too hot.

if the max for that drive is 60, then obviously even if its up to 54c, then its not too hot.

reguardless of how you personally feel about temps for specific hardware components, manufacturers dont just pull those numbers out of thin air. They put alot of research into it to find the max SAFE operating temp. So as long as you stay within the range of the operating temp, then your fine.

As far as what could happen if it does overheat. I had a drive exceed manufacturers thermal limits for about 3 weeks straight on a hot summer when the AC in the dorms went out, and the drive just died, didnt even recignize it during boot up at all. It was still under a manufacturers warrenty, and they did replace it for free, but i lost all the data.

sjoukew · Post by **sjoukew** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 2:18 pm

The effect of heat on a drive is quite easy. The hotter it gets, the shorter it lives. I have read somewhere that the effect of 50 degrees in comparison to 30 degrees shortens the lifetime by 50%. But guess what, I can't find the source of that information anymore

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 3:39 pm

sjoukew wrote:The effect of heat on a drive is quite easy. The hotter it gets, the shorter it lives. I have read somewhere that the effect of 50 degrees in comparison to 30 degrees shortens the lifetime by 50%. But guess what, I can't find the source of that information anymore

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