Do hard disks get less tolerant to heat as they age?

[Markus]

Hi, when I first got my external USB hard disk, it worked fine. I've
used it pretty much 24/7 for about 2 years, and now it overheats
easily, and to use It i have to place it on a desk with a fan pointing
directly at it.

A few questions?

Is this a sign it's about to die?

Is it a case of its age making it less tolerant to heat? Or a case of
its age meaning it generates more eat and so overheats more easily?


Mark.

 

[Rod Speed]

Hi, when I first got my external USB hard disk, it worked fine.
I've used it pretty much 24/7 for about 2 years, and now it
overheats easily, and to use It i have to place it on a desk
with a fan pointing directly at it.

A few questions?

Is this a sign it's about to die?

Yes it could if you cant keep it cool enough.

Is it a case of its age making it less tolerant to heat?
Nope.

Or a case of its age meaning it generates
more heat and so overheats more easily?

Shouldnt be happening, but its possible that the bearing
is getting worse so more power is required to rotate it now.

If its got an internal fan, it could be that the fan has
died or that the fan has got clogged up with fur etc.

Its a real worry that its getting hot in your winter, its
only going to get worse in the hottest of summer.

 

[Markus]

The disk itself seems 'louder'; like instead of a whirring as it
accesses files, it sounds more like a (still soft) grinding sound.

Also, when it gets very hot, it makes a load CLUNK noise, seems to stop
spinning, and then spins up and trains again.

Currently I have it's okay with a fan pointing at it; do you think It'd
be fine to use it so long as a fan is pointing at it?

It doesnt have its own fan, it's just a hard disk surrounded by a metal
box barely bigger than the drive itself.

I have two other external hard disks that have much larger cases and
they dont have any problems.

 

[Markus]

What i'd like to know really, is how safe would it be if I took this
problematic hard disk, and re-enclosed it inside a decent enclosure,
one with its own fan and some vents? Or is there obviously a problem
with the drive itself, given that it's worked well for 2 or so years
without making this CLUNK noise until I point a fan at it?

 

[tod]

I would assume the drive is going bad.

 

[Rod Speed]

The disk itself seems 'louder'; like instead of a whirring as it
accesses files, it sounds more like a (still soft) grinding sound.

If its only heard when accessing files, not when
its not accessing files, it isnt the main bearing.

Also, when it gets very hot, it makes a load CLUNK noise,
seems to stop spinning, and then spins up and trains again.

Thats the drive recalibrating when it cant read the data.

Currently I have it's okay with a fan pointing at it;

Do you mean that it doesnt clunk with the fan pointing at it ?

do you think It'd be fine to use it so long as a fan is pointing at it?

Hard to say, really depends on how well the design
gets heat from the drive to the outside of the case.

Unfortunately you cant monitor the SMART temp of the drive
when the drive is in an external case with USB and firewire.

It doesnt have its own fan, it's just a hard disk surrounded
by a metal box barely bigger than the drive itself.

Yeah, thats pretty common.

I have two other external hard disks that have much
larger cases and they dont have any problems.

Even thats not certain when you cant monitor the drive SMART temp.

What i'd like to know really, is how safe would it be if I took
this problematic hard disk, and re-enclosed it inside a decent
enclosure, one with its own fan and some vents?

That should work fine.

Or is there obviously a problem with the drive itself,
given that it's worked well for 2 or so years without
making this CLUNK noise until I point a fan at it?

Are you saying it only clunks with the fan pointing at it ?

It should be clunking only when the fan isnt pointing at it.

 

[Markus]

Sorry, yup I wrote my last post with a little haste.

It only makes a clunking noise when the fan isn't pointing at it.
It'll clunk, stop spinning, but still be able to copy files, but then
eventually it clunks over and over again until windows xp tells me it
cannot read data from it anymore; and i have to switch the drive off
and on a few times before it will be detected by windows.

Just a little worried that it didn't need any additional cooling for
about 2 years and now, since it started making a clunking noise, it
needs a big desk fan pointing at it to work normally...

 

[Rod Speed]

Sorry, yup I wrote my last post with a little haste.

It only makes a clunking noise when the fan isn't pointing at it.
It'll clunk, stop spinning, but still be able to copy files, but then
eventually it clunks over and over again until windows xp tells me
it cannot read data from it anymore; and i have to switch the
drive off and on a few times before it will be detected by windows.

Yeah, thats just the drive recalibrating when its got too hot
and cant read the data off the platters properly anymore.

Its a symptom of the lack of adequate cooling.

Just a little worried that it didn't need any additional cooling for
about 2 years and now, since it started making a clunking noise,
it needs a big desk fan pointing at it to work normally...

Its possible that the main bearing has degraded over time
so it now takes more power to rotate the platters than it
did, and thats why its getting hotter now that it used to.

 

[Markus]

Okay... So I assume the best thing for me to do would be to remove the
disk from its enclosure and connect it to a friends PC, to check its
SMART status?

If SMART says everything's ok; should I expect more years of service
out of it, so long as I place it in a different enclosure with more
adequate cooling to take into consideration this bearing degradation?
Or is it a case once this degradation has taken place; the disk itself
becomes exponentially more prone to failure, even if well-cooled?

Thanks for your help so far by the way(!).

 

[Rod Speed]

Okay... So I assume the best thing for me to do would
be to remove the disk from its enclosure and connect
it to a friends PC, to check its SMART status?

That wont tell you what temperature it gets up to in that case.

If SMART says everything's ok; should I expect more years of service
out of it, so long as I place it in a different enclosure with more
adequate cooling to take into consideration this bearing degradation?

Correct. See what the SMART data shows about the
spinup time. Use Everest to see the SMART data.

Or is it a case once this degradation has taken place; the disk itself
becomes exponentially more prone to failure, even if well-cooled?

No, it should be fine if you can get rid of the extra heat thats
being generated if the bearing has got worse than it used to be.

Thanks for your help so far by the way(!).

No problem, thats what these technical groups are all about.

 

[Markus]

That wont tell you what temperature it gets up to in that case.

The enclosure the hard disk currently has is simply a plastic rim
around the hard disk itself, with aluminum panels flush with the top
and bottom of the hard disk, plus a tiny bit of room at the front for
the usb & firewire interface circuitry; the clunking still occurs even
when I remove the hard disk from its enclosure; so if I connected this
raw hard disk (or even with as much of the enclosure around it as
possible, to a dangling out IDE cable from a PC; so that the hard disk
itself remained in the open and not cooled by any of the PC fans, would
this give an accurate report?

No problem, thats what these technical groups are all about.

The depth of expertise available in this newsgroups is very impressive;
it makes tech support lines pale in comparison.

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

The enclosure the hard disk currently has is
simply a plastic rim around the hard disk itself,

Thats bad design.

with aluminum panels flush with the top and bottom of the hard disk,

There should be good metal to metal contact with
those with a fanless enclosure, to conduct the heat
from the drive rails to those aluminum panels.

plus a tiny bit of room at the front for
the usb & firewire interface circuitry;

Yeah, that has to go somewhere and at the front or back is best.

the clunking still occurs even when I
remove the hard disk from its enclosure;

Yeah, some drives get stinking hot when run loose on the desktop.
They rely on conduction to the metal drive bay stack in a normal case.

so if I connected this raw hard disk (or even with as much of the
enclosure around it as possible, to a dangling out IDE cable from
a PC; so that the hard disk itself remained in the open and not
cooled by any of the PC fans, would this give an accurate report?

Not of the temperature it gets to inside the case.

If its say possible to take the end out of the case so you
can connect the IDE ribbon cable from the PC to the drive,
that would be closer to the temperature it usually gets to.

The depth of expertise available in this newsgroups is very
impressive; it makes tech support lines pale in comparison.

Yeah, I learn quite a bit from it myself at times, particularly
stuff that I haven never bothered with much like Grub etc.

 

[bobha]

My Hd suffers from a peoblem of this sort, sometimes with no apparen
reason, there's a loud repetitive clicking noise coming from th
disk
I ran several diagnosis tools and none found any bad sectors or thing
like that
I ran Maxtor's PowerMax and anything you can imagine, defragged th
disk and nothing happened
Some time ago I changed this drive to slave, and booted WinXP fro
another HD. Now I just access files on the problematic drive, not th
system anymore, and the blue screens of death stopped appearing
Anyway, although the problem got less frequent, it is still there
I used to believe that excess heat was causing this, because my cas
was always displaying warnings. I boutgh a HDD cooler and at th
first boot the noises came up again

 

[bobha]

My Hd suffers from a peoblem of this sort, sometimes with no apparen
reason, there's a loud repetitive clicking noise coming from th
disk
I ran several diagnosis tools and none found any bad sectors or thing
like that
I ran Maxtor's PowerMax and anything you can imagine, defragged th
disk and nothing happened
Some time ago I changed this drive to slave, and booted WinXP fro
another HD. Now I just access files on the problematic drive, not th
system anymore, and the blue screens of death stopped appearing
Anyway, although the problem got less frequent, it is still there
I used to believe that excess heat was causing this, because my cas
was always displaying warnings. I boutgh a HDD cooler and at th
first boot the noises came up again

 

[bobha]

My Hd suffers from a peoblem of this sort, sometimes with no apparen
reason, there's a loud repetitive clicking noise coming from th
disk
I ran several diagnosis tools and none found any bad sectors or thing
like that
I ran Maxtor's PowerMax and anything you can imagine, defragged th
disk and nothing happened
Some time ago I changed this drive to slave, and booted WinXP fro
another HD. Now I just access files on the problematic drive, not th
system anymore, and the blue screens of death stopped appearing
Anyway, although the problem got less frequent, it is still there
I used to believe that excess heat was causing this, because my cas
was always displaying warnings. I boutgh a HDD cooler and at th
first boot the noises came up again