I've just installed 2 more hard drives bringing my total up to 4. They are all installed in the 3 1/2 drive bays. I noticed today that it's geting kinda hot in there (duh!) and I was wondering what would be the best way to cool them down? I would prefer to leave them where they are but I do have two 5 1/4 drive bays free.

I have found fans that attach to the bottom of the drives but I'm not sure if these blow or draw warm air away from the drives. I'm concerned that if they draw the warm air away, it'll just make the drive below even hotter.

I would really appreciate any help with this as it has got me a bit worried.

Cheers.

Si


Windows XP Pro
Pentium 4 2.53MHz 533FSB
Gigabyte 8INXP Motherboard
1 GB PC2700 Ram (Dual Channel)
MSI GeForce 4 Ti4800 x8 AGP 128MB DDR
40GB WD Hard Drive 7200rpm (C Drive)
120GB WD Hard Drive 7200rpm (D Drive)
120GB WD Hard Drive 7200rpm (H Drive)
120GB WD Hard Drive 7200rpm (I Drive)
LiteOn 52x24x52 CD-ReWriter
Asus 56x CD-Rom
SB Audigy 2
400W Zalman Quiet PC PSU
GlobalWin Aluminium Case

With running so many HD's, ambient air temperatures within the case are going to soar. Whilst shopping today for a new fan/heatsink, i came across exhausts which remove masses of hot air from hotspots such as running many HD's. This might be a cure.

Dave

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...onics&n=281407

You can buy that kind of adapters. They're 2 metal brackets that you screw to the hard drive. Then you can mount them in a 5 1/4 bay. They are very simple to install. the problem with 4 hard drives is that the air flow is obstructed. If you mount 2 hdds in 5 1/4 bays and the other 2 hdds in 3 1/2 that are NOT one on top of the other you should have it very easy to keep a good airlflow through them. That is if you have some case fan's running and if your system doesn't run terribly hot (as a overclocked one would).

I have 4 hard drives in my server, and 5 hard drives in my workstation.

The 4 in the server are fine, but the 5 in the other machine stacked up so close got a bit hot, so I bought coolers for them:






...or, here is something, still by Cool Master, that's even nicer:




If you really like all of this stuff, get a big tower case and fit all finds of things in there like that... like this:

Thanks guys. You've given me a few ideas. I think I'll move 2 drives to the 5 1/4 drive bays as per dani_17 suggestion. But I'm definately getting a couple of those coolermaster things when I can afford it

Cheers.

Si

Keeping your drives cool is VERY IMPORTANT! Any mechanical device will fail prematurely when exposed to heat or other conditions that may cause additional wear.

Hard disks are especially sucseptible to heat as they are extremely high-precision devices that do not tolerate anything but perfect operation.

Had a similar problem but instead of cooling fans I went with external usb and 1394 hard drive cases for the 'extra' drives.