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Have any of you (I'm lookin at you Andere) physically experimented with different hard drives in order to find the best? Does anyone have a good link?

All I know is there are a few things to consider: (obviously) size, RPMs and heat. Mine gets pretty frickin hot, I've been thinking about putting a heat sink on it. Do any HD's come installed with a heat sink?

Input will be appreciated.

Since you're talking about your hard drive getting hot, I assume you mean an external one, right? (otherwise, how would you know?)

Anyway, just because something gets hot, that doesn't mean that it's a problem (unless it's too hot to touch and you need to touch it for some reason, I guess...). Some of the components in my PC say that they will work up over 100 degrees C. No idea how hot my hard drive gets. Never bothered to look into it... I've never heard of a hard drive overheating, nor have I heard of one that comes with a heat sink.

In terms of what's the best, you'll need to narrow it down. If speed is all you're concerned about, SSD's are many, many times faster than HDDs. They're also more reliable in many ways, and I think they run cooler too (less power consumption). Though they're many times more expensive, and if it's external, the speed might be limited by how they're connected.

Anyway, narrow it down for us and we might be able to help. Internal/external (USB3/SATA3?), budget, size etc.

Don't know much about hard drives, but about temperatures - you can find out how hot your computer parts are rather easily, there are sensors inside. You need a program like AIDA (what used to be Everest), it gives you very detailed info about your system (though the hard drive temperature is only available in full version, not the free one). My computer is low-end, so when I stress the video card a lot, for example by playing Skyrim, it occasionally goes almost all the way up to 100 degrees Celcius. It's a good idea to check out the readings before getting a new component - if you're getting a lot of high temperatures, it's probably best to make sure your new part is not generating a lot of heat or install a heat sink or additional fan.

Thanks for the advice guys. Here's what I'm gonna do:

I didn't realize how many SATA slots I have, and how cheap the upgrade is. Ironically I only have physical room for 2 (video card the size of a brick). I figure I'll 86 my current HD and put in 2 of these http://www.goharddrive.com/ProductDetai ... lick=46406

I've been planning a reformat with Linux (Ubuntu probably) using a dual boot setup like I used to. This way I can have a hard drive for each OS (overkill but it's affordable).

Regarding cooling, I'll just play with it and figure something out. 'Installing' a heat sink will be interesting. It's only really a matter of keeping good contact with the case. I have a fan in perfect position to cool down the HD but it's not hooked up, it's kinda whacked. I can put one in the back of the case as well, right underneath the video card. This should create some kind of a wind tunnel effect.
EDIT:If you can see it, yes, those are wood screws... It was an experiment.

Commonly, you shouldn't have problems with HDD temperatures. I've never encountered "burning disks". My guess would be that your present disk is running out, therefore creating extra heat. Can't really tell what my disk temperatures are, since I use my HDD only as a storage, it's pretty much in rest; I use two SSD disks for programs. The main question would be, what is your chassis temperature? If it's somewhere between 35-40 degrees Celsius, then your HDD should be just fine - with adequate air flow.

And, if you're using some software to give you temps, I've used some too, and they've shown temps up to 300 degrees Celsius --- ridiculous!

Installing a heat sink... always an option, but it sounds a bit far fetched. Unless your disk is burning hot when you touch it, like you could fry eggs on it, I'd say you need to do nothing. Electronic devices create heat, and they are built to tolerate it. If the air flow = general cooling is THAT poor, to allow you to fry eggs... you'll get the same problem with any new disk.

Unless it is a problem with your present disk, I would suggest to take a serious look on your chassis ventilation. Being a very lazy user of a vacuum cleaner myself, you should see my flat, a computer does well with a cleanse now and then.

About different disks, not that big a difference. In normal use, and even with games, you won't really notice the difference. If you want difference, go to SSD.

Hope you get it worked out, sincerely.

Andere wrote: Installing a heat sink... always an option, but it sounds a bit far fetched. Unless your disk is burning hot when you touch it, like you could fry eggs on it, I'd say you need to do nothing.

Funny you say this because I was going to use this analogy because I literally could cook eggs on it (if said eggs were covered, 'nother story I guess). It's really hot to the touch. I've had two friends lose hard drives and I'm assuming it was heat related.

I'm doing other small upgrades on my pc while I'm at it and I figure now's the time to get this stuff taken care of. I'm using my PC for business (Linux OS for biz) and I want to go the extra mile to make sure nothing bad like this happens. It's more than losing my Skyrim character. I do back up my info but I don't want the hard drive to crash in the first place.

Said 'upgrade' (another fan and heat sink) will be a free upgrade which will take less than an hour of my time. This should generally eliminate the heating thing. So why not? Will be fun.

As to ventilation: I'm okay there. No dust anywhere. About every other month I'll hit it with that compressed air can thing they sell at office supply stores. I'll also pull off the CPU and spray it's heat sink, that thing clogs so fast! I can tell when I need it: The vibrant red on the video card looks dulled as if exposed to UV light, but it's just dust. Spray it once and she looks good again.

EDIT: Actually yeah, I see what you mean. Where the HD is located there's virtually zero ventilation. It's in a 'pocket' almost. I have a fan in the perfect spot, it's just not hooked up. I'll reconnect it and 'test' (get the potions ready Mr. Redguard).

The entire PC stays generally cool except when exposed to hours of gaming. Then if you touch the top of it (where the power supply is) it's really hot. I'll take the side cover off and it cools down instantly. I could put a fan in the side cover if I am so inclined on a Saturday morning or something.

I know this might be overkill, but I like tinkering and am a fanboy of electronics, cars, hobby stuff, etc. Good ol healthy fun.

How much better is SSD? Is it really noticeable? I'll do some investigations as now is the time for me to do this upgrade. That being said, I don't game much and my PC keeps up with Skyrim on full settings. The only other game I really play is Civ V. The PC keeps up with that but the turns take way too long.

With an SSD, things will load faster, but that is all. You won't get more frames per second or anything like that. The difference is certainly noticeable. You can find videos on YouTube of people booting up their PC in under 10 seconds - it's really quite impressive. Similarly, programs will load faster, loading screens in games will be shorter (unless they're loading from the disc) etc.

If you're just going to do this head sink thing for fun, then I guess it doesn't really matter whether the HDD is actually overheating or not, but it still might be worth checking out. There are lots of programs that do it, just Google. As Andre said, they can be inaccurate, but if so, just download another one and see if it's any better. I'm actually quite curious as to whether the temperatures are anywhere near as high internally as externally. What I'm slightly more worried about is that, if your HDD is heating up, other components could be heating up as well. Do you know what kind of temperatures your graphics card and processor are reaching? Might be worth looking into...

One note about cooling: Exhaust fans are generally better at cooling than intake fans, though that's probably only true if they're placed in the right spots: On the top, towards the back, or at the back, towards the top. If it's possible to put fans there, it will really help with cooling.

Moeboid wrote:One note about cooling: Exhaust fans are generally better at cooling than intake fans, though that's probably only true if they're placed in the right spots: On the top, towards the back, or at the back, towards the top. If it's possible to put fans there, it will really help with cooling.

Agree 100%. A fan on the top is a good thing, since hot air is driven upwards by nature, and giving it a kick out is helpful. I solved some heat problems with my old case by simply drilling holes on the top of the case, allowing hot air to flow out. I also drilled holes in the bottom of the case, allowing cold air to get in. Actually, I thought about building my computer inside a refrigerator, style Minibar... "we nuts come in many forms", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF-CkMpQtlY

About SSDs, here's one test, http://www.notebookreview.com/default.a ... hard+drive. How reliable the test is, and how much the difference matters in daily work... now that's an eternal question. Another thread that may be of interest, http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=363577.

I'm not sure I can say that SSDs are worth their price, they are still quite expensive, and their capacity is low. In early 2012 OCZ declared that SSDs will be cheaper and with higher capacity by the end of the year. Obvious marketing talk, since nothing of the kind has happened! But still, I'm quite happy with mine. And they don't need to be defragged ... how much that may mean?

leroybrown wrote: How much better is SSD? Is it really noticeable? I'll do some investigations as now is the time for me to do this upgrade. That being said, I don't game much and my PC keeps up with Skyrim on full settings. The only other game I really play is Civ V. The PC keeps up with that but the turns take way too long.

At the current price, a SSD should really only be considered for storing your OS and games. Making them boot faster and all. Keep in mind that SSDs have a limited number of writes i.e write data to the SSD too much and you won't be able to write to it anymore. If you want to store a large amount of data, stick to cheap HDDs. A 2tb HDD costs the same as a 256gb SDD, there and around. The Linux distro I'm running boots in like 13 seconds anyways using a HDD.

Never heard of people putting heatsinks on a HDD. Be sure to post pics if you go through with it!

Hey, when I mentioned a heatsink as a possible solution, I meant putting it on the part that's generating heat already, like a processor or a GPU, not on a new hard drive. If your current setup is already almost too hot, putting a new heat source there is going to fry something. I know that it's not an issue for most computers, but in mine pretty much anything new would overheat the GPU, so I would need an extra fan or a better heatsink on it.

Lindai wrote: Never heard of people putting heatsinks on a HDD. Be sure to post pics if you go through with it!

Will do. I've a few of them laying around in a box somewhere so gotta find a nice fit. Also will plug in another exhaust fan.. or two?

EDIT: Heat sinks have vanished!? What the hell? I swore I had like 3 of them, I know I have 1 somewhere but it seems to have ran off. I'll work on this tomorrow.

I'm not sure that heatsinks would be the answer. It would take some pressure off the HDD, but if you can't get the heat out from the case, it'll only end up with the rest of the case.

I still recommend to pay attention to the general ventilation of the case. If you install new fans, please use bigger fans, like 120 or 150mm. With the same air flow, they make less noise than smaller fans.

Another possibility could be water cooling, they aren't very expensive, and you can get your HDD there too, just Google "water cooling for hdd".

What case do you have? According to the picture you sent, if I see it correctly, your disk is almost touching the motherboard, and there won't be much place...

Dunno, but perhaps your money would be better spent in a new case. They oftentimes come with several fans - I have a Nexus case, came with two fans, place for five fans, plus USB 3 connections.

Oh, I'm not concerned let me reiterate:
1 this is more for fun than anything else
2 I have 1 intake fan and 1 exhaust fan and as I said, I have two or three fans laying around from previous computers. I have enough room for two more (exhaust fans). I'm not concerned about the immediate future. I'm thinking a year down the road kinda thing. The intake fan is literally right in front of it (a bit too high). If I plug it in it may fix the problem all together. I could also cut a hole in the case and install another fan. I'm sure fans would cure the problem and would be the smartest path to go if I were the average person.

So again, I understand heat sink is not a great idea but here's what you guys aren't understanding: this is what I do for fun, work on stuff. Think of me as Hank Hill. I am OCD as can be and I like building/tinkering things. I have a written work schedule for my car and I wash and vacuum it every weekend. I love tinkering with it, I do all my own maintenance and 50% of it is out of fun.

I also enjoy tinkering with electronics like old school vinyl players, head units, whatever. I spent $20 on an old school head unit and it's sooo frickin good. It'll shake the windows, it produces zero electrical noise and is generally rad. There's a few things wrong with it (needs 9 tactile switches aka buttons and the pots aka potentiometer aka knob need deoxit treatment). My whole sound system is worth over $1k and I've spent less than $400 on it just by collecting gear over the years. I can do anything, from put an edger motor on a bicycle to wiring up a solar panel (sounds complex, but a car cd player is much more complex).

When it comes to putting a heat sink on a hard drive, I mean that'll take literally 5 minutes and I've never done it. So just try to look at this from my perspective. I play literally 3-4 games for a few hours a week. If I'm not working, I'm doing something like this or hanging out with friends or working on my pool game. This weekends big project is designing and building a portable stand for a 75 pound heavy bag. I could easily just buy one, but then I wouldn't be able to design one my own, go to the store to pick out materials, cut the lumber down, sand, paint and construct.

Back to the PC:
Water cooling ain't gonna happen. Maybe next pc build.

Regarding your thoughts on if the heatsink will perform: I disagree with you. However, if I'm wrong, I'll let you know and to what extent. Before I do anything I need to come up with an accurate way to measure temperatures. Touch test isn't so great haha.

I wouldn't go with that HD you posted ... yeah it's 10K RPM but it only has 16MB cache and 250GB on the platter. Aside from small cache the lower data density means that the drive will have to spin a lot more to read the same amount of information as a 1 or 2TB drive. 1 decent Seagate 2TB 7200RPM drive with 64M cache should be significantly faster than those drives - I think you would have to put the drives you posted in RAID0 to get close

Sometimes a HD gets very hot when it's failing, which may be the case with your current one

Post a picture of the inside of your case so we can see what's going on with your air cooling

leroybrown wrote:Have any of you (I'm lookin at you Andere) physically experimented with different hard drives in order to find the best? Does anyone have a good link?

All I know is there are a few things to consider: (obviously) size, RPMs and heat. Mine gets pretty frickin hot, I've been thinking about putting a heat sink on it. Do any HD's come installed with a heat sink?

Input will be appreciated.

also include Solid State Drives/NVMe U.3 SSD/6.4TB-2.5Inch in it
I've experimented with a few different hard drives, and it's definitely interesting to see how performance varies! Here are some insights:

Size: Larger drives (like 6TB or more) are great for storage-heavy tasks, but they can generate more heat.

RPMs: Higher RPMs generally mean faster data access, but also more heat. 7200 RPM drives are a good balance for most users.

Heat Management: Heat is a big concern. Some drives, especially high-performance ones, can get quite hot. Adding a heat sink can help manage this. For example, the Western Digital WDSL003B-02 SAS IcePack is a 2.5" to 3.5" hard drive mounting kit with a built-in heatsink.

Additionally, consider upgrading to Solid State Drives/NVMe U.3 SSD/6.4TB-2.5Inch for exceptional performance and reliability. NVMe SSDs are known for their blazing-fast read and write speeds, significantly reducing latency and improving overall system responsiveness. Plus, they generate less heat compared to traditional HDDs, making them a great choice for heat management.

It's worth checking reviews and benchmarks for specific models to see how they handle heat and performance. Do you have a particular use case in mind for your hard drive?