bottom plate to protect hdd

  • Thread starter Thread starter Flasherly
  • Start date Start date
F

Flasherly

Got a 1T $50 3-yr warr. 5.4Krpm HDD -- will be moving away from DVDs,
skipping BRay for hardware on esata/usb docking stations. Longterm
storage considerations.

I could take a couple screws to secure a make-shift plastic plate to
the bottom of the HDD.

Better than having carefully to handle a drive bare w/out a plate to
protect its electronics, though nicer to have some cheap prefab
plates, notably convenient if designed for heat venting.

My docker doesn't include a fan, and though less an heat issue at
5400rpm -- cool is best to me. First I'll protect the HD and then
start watching for heat.

Seen any such functional plates floating at Chinese/Singapore/ebay
pricing?
 
Flasherly said:
I could take a couple screws to secure a make-shift plastic plate to
the bottom of the HDD.

Better than having carefully to handle a drive bare w/out a plate to
protect its electronics,
Click to expand...

Most people don't handle their hdd/s by sticking their fingers into the
circuit/logic board.
 
Flasherly said:
"Mike Easter"

Put on the plate to factor out most.
Click to expand...

I'll bet it is going to be very hard to factor in the screws without
having unintended consequences and I'll bet it is going to be hotter
inside the casing than it was before.

Don't you think that it would be more sensible to just keep your fingers
out of there? The upper and lower surface of a mobo has a lot more
things exposed than that. Are you going to design wrappers for a mobo?
 
I'll bet it is going to be very hard to factor in the screws without
having unintended consequences and I'll bet it is going to be hotter
inside the casing than it was before.
Don't you think that it would be more sensible to just keep your fingers
out of there? The upper and lower surface of a mobo has a lot more
things exposed than that. Are you going to design wrappers for a mobo?
Click to expand...

The OP mentioned "esata/usb docking stations." The idea is you take a bare
hard drive and insert it into an external docking port to backup and
restore data. The drive sits in the dock vertically which is usually not a
position supported by hard drive manufacturers. Personally I think it's a
really bad idea but it's a growing option now for newer motherboards that
support esata.

Seagate had something called a SeaShield that attached to the bottom of
their older PATA drives. Here's what one looked like:

http://i38.tinypic.com/14kwn54.jpg

It caused overheating of the drive and early failure, the SeaShield was
quietly discontinued......
 
The OP mentioned "esata/usb docking stations." The idea is you take a bare
hard drive and insert it into an external docking port to backup and
restore data. The drive sits in the dock vertically which is usually not a
position supported by hard drive manufacturers. Personally I think it's a
really bad idea but it's a growing option now for newer motherboards that
support esata.

Seagate had something called a SeaShield that attached to the bottom of
their older PATA drives. Here's what one looked like:

http://i38.tinypic.com/14kwn54.jpg

It caused overheating of the drive and early failure, the SeaShield was
quietly discontinued......
Click to expand...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153071

Picked up a Rosewill clone -- combo 1T HD. Bad idea... Nooo... good
idea. Most excellent considering the alternative, doing the DVD
shuffle, then wait awhile between, in and out of 3 burners. Imagine a
stack of 50, getting near halfway through. The sheer horror
necessitates the future arrive. That 1T Samsung cost me $40US. Now
the future has to catch up with some sort of back plate for the HD
that'll keep my grubby thumbs out -- while not retaining heat (I'll
live with thumbs before taking on heat). This Rosewill is everybody's
USB only, or pretty doggone fast to my DVD-burner mindset. Used it
last night for a 100Meg copy -- maybe 45 minutes. Warmed up but
didn't get too toasty. When I was done, (though there's lots more to
copy), I went to put the HD back in the Samsung's factory packaging.
Reached over grabbed it and, sure enough, my thumb somehow found
itself planted into the middle of the back. Hardly noticed what I was
doing, though think I may have missed adding body acids to that tiny
bronze ribbon cable fixed to the lower case impression outlining the
platters.
 
Marty said:
Seagate had something called a SeaShield that attached to the bottom of
their older PATA drives. Here's what one looked like:

http://i38.tinypic.com/14kwn54.jpg

It caused overheating of the drive and early failure, the SeaShield was
quietly discontinued......
Click to expand...

Drive casting temp would be 5F hotter with it in place.

Back in the 1980s, Everex shipped its retail kit Seagate drives with a
piece of "protective" cardboard on the circuit board, and those drives
almost always failed before other identical Seagates without the
cardboard did. For the ST225/238R drives, damage was almost always
limited to the H bridge driver for the head positioner.

In the 1990s, Juge Tandon Systems, JTS, made drives with the
electronics inside the sealed area. Those drives were known for high
failure rates, but I don't know if mounting the electronics
electronically had anything to do with that.

I haven't noticed Western Digital drives failing sooner than average,
despite their chips facing the drive body rather than being exposed to
outside convection flow.
 
Drive casting temp would be 5F hotter with it in place.

Back in the 1980s, Everex shipped its retail kit Seagate drives with a
piece of "protective" cardboard on the circuit board, and those drives
almost always failed before other identical Seagates without the
cardboard did.  For the ST225/238R drives, damage was almost always
limited to the H bridge driver for the head positioner.

In the 1990s, Juge Tandon Systems, JTS, made drives with the
electronics inside the sealed area.  Those drives were known for high
failure rates, but I don't know if mounting the electronics
electronically had anything to do with that.

I haven't noticed Western Digital drives failing sooner than average,
despite their chips facing the drive body rather than being exposed to
outside convection flow.
Click to expand...


If youre only using it for backups, it'll see so little up time that
even 5 degrees hotter it should far outlast its time of usefulness.
Hard to imagine a 1T drive being too small to be any use, but it'll
happen. The old piece of card screwed to the base of the hdd over the
drive electronics is just about enough protection.


NT
 
Back
Top