hard disk overheating

hi guys,
i own an acer aspire 5630, which i bought in 2007. never had a problem with it, apart from cleaning the fan and heat sink from dust which i've done two or three times.

in the last week i've had a new overheating problem, which is that my hard disk has started getting extremely hot. now the fan is defiitely working, because i can hear it. so i'm a bit confused about what to do. i thought perhaps the fan maybe isn't working as well as it has in the past, and that maybe i should just buy a new fan for it.

does anybody else have any idea why the hard disk would be getting so hot all of a sudden, or have any suggestions for me please?

 

What's the HDD temperature according to SMART? You can use i.e. free version of HD Tune to monitor SMART status.
You could also copy SMART status (all values) and post it here so we could take a look at any potential problems resulting from overheating.

 

hi there, thanks for the reply. the temperature is currently 51, but last night it was a lot hotter (around 55-56) and i was just doing things which last week would never had got the computer so hot. here are the values i understood you wanted.

HD Tune Pro: Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00 Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(01) Raw Read Error Rate 100 100 62 0 ok
(02) Throughput Performance 100 100 40 0 ok
(03) Spin Up Time 232 232 33 1 ok
(04) Start/Stop Count 99 99 0 2966 ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 100 100 5 0 ok
(07) Seek Error Rate 100 100 67 0 ok
(08) Seek Time Performance 100 100 40 0 ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 73 73 0 12163 ok
(0A) Spin Retry Count 100 100 60 0 ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 99 99 0 2864 ok
(BF) G-sense Error Rate 100 100 0 65536 ok
(C0) Power Off Retract Count 100 100 0 92 ok
(C1) Load Cycle Count 94 94 0 63120 ok
(C2) Temperature 107 107 0 524339 ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count 100 100 0 81 warning
(C5) Current Pending Sector 100 100 0 0 ok
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable 100 100 0 0 ok
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 200 253 0 0 ok
(DF) Load/Unload Retry Count 100 100 0 0 ok

Health Status : warning


i hope you can help, cos i am desperate for a solution.

 

You should back-up your data and replace the drive ASAP. Although there are no relocated sectors there were 81 attempts (successful or not-that's not known) to relocate sector or sectors that are failing.
Your HDD has worked for over 12000 hours which is a lot especially considering the temperatures it has to sustain so there's no reason to take any risks- back-up important data and start shopping for a new HDD.
Hard driver are rather cheap and much faster now than when you bought your notebook so new HDD is gonna not only make your data safe but also improve the general responsiveness of your system- that's all the consolation I can give...

 

I just ran the same program, my hard drive is at 53 celcius, as long as its not 60+ I don't think I should worry.

If that program says everything is ok, does it mean my hard drive is fine then? because I can't make any sense out of those numbers.

can u have a look plz?

HD Tune: WDC WD1600BEVS-22RST0 Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(01) Raw Read Error Rate 200 200 51 0 Ok
(03) Spin Up Time 187 185 21 1625 Ok
(04) Start/Stop Count 97 97 0 3824 Ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 200 200 140 0 Ok
(07) Seek Error Rate 100 253 51 0 Ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 95 95 0 4213 Ok
(0A) Spin Retry Count 100 100 51 0 Ok
(0B) Calibration Retry Count 100 100 51 0 Ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 97 97 0 3004 Ok
(C0) Power Off Retract Count 200 200 0 355 Ok
(C1) Load Cycle Count 186 186 0 42494 Ok
(C2) Temperature 94 86 0 53 Ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count 200 200 0 0 Ok
(C5) Current Pending Sector 200 200 0 0 Ok
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable 100 253 0 0 Ok
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 200 200 0 0 Ok
(C8) Write Error Rate 100 253 51 0 Ok

Power On Time : 4213
Health Status : Ok

 

thanks for the response. thankfully i have all my data backed up anyway but its nice to have some forwarning anyway. i was gonna get some ram for it but now looks like i'll have to buy a new hard drive too.

 

Yours is fine- no SMART parameter indicates any immediate failure but keep monitoring it- especially values in bold. If in any of those cases the "data" value (the last one here) is anything other than "0" you're in trouble.

No problem.

 

Thanks for your help, I was a bit worried since my HD was really slow, I formated it yesterday so now its liveable again. I've only had it since oktober 2007 but it easily ran 12 hours a day the first months. If my laptop will survive this summer I think i'll buy a new 7200rpm hard drive. There's nothing like starting clean with a faster drive ^^

 

SMART status generally is a rather poor indicator of remaining drive life (google for Google's study on smart in their server arrays) but uncorrectable read errors and reallocated sectors are two clear indications of trouble

BACK UP and REPLACE NOW

 

Try this ashampoo hdd software , it has a 10 day trial , it might give you a shock though.

http://www.ashampoo.com/frontend/products/php/product.php?idstring=0065&session_langid=2

 

HD Tune Pro: FUJITSU MJA2320BH G2 Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(01) Raw Read Error Rate 100 100 46 210075 ok
(03) Spin Up Time 100 100 25 1 ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 100 100 24 0 ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 94 94 0 190951 ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 100 100 0 824 ok
(BF) G-sense Error Rate 100 100 0 247 ok
(C0) Power Off Retract Count 100 100 0 26 ok
(C1) Load Cycle Count 99 99 0 38394 ok
(C2) Temperature 100 100 0 917547 ok
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 100 100 0 20031595 warning
(C8) Write Error Rate 100 100 0 69055822 ok
(F0) Head Flying Hours 100 100 0 168348 ok
(F1) (unknown attribute) 100 100 0 -1538850813 ok
(F2) (unknown attribute) 100 100 0 -429326332 ok

Health Status : warning


Could anybody tell me what my warning is and if my HD is okay

 

SLYNENAL

Your warning line is supposed to react to the the number of times the HDD and Motherboard asked each other for repetition of data that while valid when sent apparently got corrupt on the transfer along the cable or in the controller at the other end.

Curiously it doesn't seem to have a bad reading at the moment or ever.

This SMART fault report should be triggered if the first column (and thus the 'worst ever second column) figure falls towards /past 0. When seen alone is more usually a cable or connector problem than a HDD one.

The current/worst data the drive is reporting suggests no error, so not immediately clear to me (anyone ?) why HD tune is reporting one. It is clear that HD tune is a bit confused reading this drive's data as the temperature information reported is clearly missing or wrong

Your option are
Ignore it. Quick but not always correct
or
Make a backup. Always a good idea anyway

Run a full disk check on your disk (give it some hard work)

Copy the contents of an optical disk DVD full of data onto the HDD (or make several copies to different directories from a CD) (e.g. a windows disk).

This latter test will put some stress on the cable /controller. then plug in an external HDD and copy your files back off onto that.

If there is a real problem you may then see errors reported in event manager on windows and also the SMART figures should get worse.

Also try checking the results in another SMART tool . . it may just be a HD tune issue.. Trust one that gets the temperature right a bit more.

If it passes all these tests it is no more likely to fail tomorrow than mine (which could of course fail at any time)

Backups are your friend

 

Some SMART statuses do not go down- by that I mean when threshold is 0 the value doesn't change for some of them- and just the data going up is the bad sign.
Here's an example- in both cases marked on the image values are technically all right but correctly recognized by HDTune as alarming



My recommendation would be to make a back up and look for a new HDD while monitoring SMART status. If you can't afford a new HDD you may live with this one for a while but if you can spend some money just ask yourself one question- how much is your data and time worth to you?
HDDs are not that expensive so I wouldn't risk it.
Side note- HDTune had a problem with proper reading/interpretation of SMART status for Seagate once and it had shown a warning sign even though it shouldn't have. Use another SMART monitoring program to verify that HDTune is right.