Depends very much on the enclosure. Plastic without fan is definitely
not enough. Aluminium with large contact surface might be enough for
7200 rpm if case fans draw air trough it. Depends on the design,
no general statement is possible (as so often). One method of
finding out is to get one, use it heavuly and measure temperature
via SMART while doing so. If this is still o.k. according
to the manufacturers documentation (e.g. Maxtor: <=55C) and
when adding the temperature difference between the time you test
and the maximum ambient temperature to be expected, go with it.
Personally I have airflow on all my drives, just to improve
reliability. But I do not have any drive bays.
Arno
I've found an interesting product, Whispersys Icy-Tank. It's half an
enclosure, just the sides and top out of heavy extruded aluminum.
It's got a detachable plastic faceplate with two little fans that sit
right in front of the hard drive and blow some air on just the front
edge surface. Pretty funny useless really, but you can pop it off and
toss it in your spare parts box.
I found the U shape didn't help getting good contact with the sides of
the hard drive, so I took a hack saw to it and removed the center two
inches of the top shelf. Now I've got two heavy duty 3.5 to 5" bay
adapters for my hard drive which I want to run in a 5" bay. Cutting
out the center, the top of the hard drive gets more airflow over it as
the heatsink didn't really make good contact up there and was just
trapping heat.
Anyway throw it in a 5" bay and let your case fans suck air over it.
The heavy rails are grooved the right direction for good heatsink
cooling.
some good pix here:
http://www.svc.com/whicyta.html
PS get a good blade for your hacksaw, the aluminum is thick
