HD Cooling?

Has anyone done any kind of cooling mod for thier HD that doesnt include getting a cooling pad? My temps on mine are about 47C and im not really doing all that much with it. seems like adding some extra vent holes on the cover that mine is under would help?

 

Woah don't drill any holes into your laptop, its case is designed to channel air a certain way to be as efficient as possible in dissipating heat. My HDD, which is identical to yours, ranges from 39C to 51C, depending on what I do. I believe that your HDD may be located next to another component that generates heat. You can try elevating just the back of your laptop slightly to allow air to flow better underneath your laptop. Otherwise, just get a cheap laptop cooler: I bought the Targus Chillpad and ended up earning $1 due to a pricematch/rebate combo

 

from reviews ive read chillpads tend to lower hard drive temperatures by as much as 15 degrees Celsius (and only cpu temps by like 2 degrees). theres really not much better you can do other than chillpads.

Of course hard drive cooling is totally pointless.

 

Main thing that bugs me is the amount of heat coming through the palm rest. I guess a cooling pad is my only option. Just seems to take part of the fun out of the mobility of a notebook when you have to carry around a cooling pad just to make it comfortable to use. Ive had this thing apart and they do nothing under the plastic palm to shield it from the heat.. maybe this was done so that it may ventilate the heat from the notebook.. I am not sure. I did Artic silver 5 on the CPU which was a pain but did lower my max temps by about 4-5c. I should have done more research on this laptop before I got it. The reviews I read said it was warm but not uncomfortable... which I think is BS... if your palms begin to sweat.. its uncomfortable.

 

A cooling pad would not make your palm rest noticeably cooler. Mine did not, and it lowered my temps by ~2C for HDD and CPU.

 

great so im SOL I guess. Seems like there could be something done. Since you have the same drive I do... does yours kinda sound like a fan is running? I thought my CPU fan wasnt turning off then I realized its my new HD. Its just a light wisper fan like noise. Doesnt really bother me but just curious if it was normal.

 

If the heat im feeling is coming from the Drive... HD cooling wouldnt be totally pointless. Whats weird is ive used a couple of the Core 2 Duo versions of the same notebook I have and they were cooler.. *shrug*.. I think this might be because of the chipset differences and if thats the case then cooling the HD wont help me at all.

 

If it's more of a "tik tik tik" sound, yeah that's normal. You can control the acoustics via a software called Notebook Hardware Control (NHC). It lowers the performance slightly but is much quieter.

 

Why ? I was under the impression heat shortened the lifespan of HDDs ??

 

Yes, heat is actually one of the primary causes of hardware failure over time. They actually simulate the effects of aging on hardware by applying heat to them, and just about everything in a PC will degrade faster due to heat.

Having said that, it isn't really an issue if you only use your laptop for the standard 3-4 years. Other causes, such as shock or abuse will cause far more damage over the span of your laptop's useful lifetime.

Note that this does not apply to overheating, which basically means the components inside a notebook generate more heat combined than what the chasis was designed to handle. This will kill components, most prominently the hard drive which is most susceptible to thermal expansion, much faster.

 

It does, within certain limits. If the harddrive gets too hot, it will shorten the lifespan. But as long as it's within acceptable temperatures, it won't make a difference. Harddrives are usually rated to work fine up to 60-65 degrees C. So at 50 degrees, I wouldn't worry about it at all. At 55, you have to start paying attention, and once it reaches 60, I'd consider better cooling.

 

Yay Jalf we agreed on something! High-Fives!!!

 

Woo
(**** 10 character limit)

 

I contacted Hitachi and they told me up to 55C is fine which so far ive been under that. I have the acoustic management turned on through a utility I downloaded and it did help some. I have a 12 cell battery coming by the end of this week which should lift the back of the notebook up almost an inch and possibly allow for better cooling... who knows. I get on my g/fs Dell E1505 and love how cool it runs.. not to mention she beat my Super PI by 24 seconds and we are clocked almost identical 1.6 Turion x2 vs 1.66 C2D. Thanks for all the great information.. this forum has been a huge help and I wish I had read more before purchasing my laptop.

 

Which have a lifespan of 4+ years. I tend to stick to the general rule that watercooling something is generally because you want to significantly overclock it. But to each their own.

I'm curious copyright are you left handed? Because if they put the hard drive on the left side that would be kind of silly. The left side is supposed to be for the optical drive so you feel no heat at all lol, no way i'd buy a laptop with HD under my palm. But hitachi's are generally hot drives but you got the best performing laptop drive around , hitachi blows away the seagate equivilent by about 5-6 mb/s (20% you can be happy about that at least.

 

I could recommend Zalman ZM-NC1000 notebook cooler . I have one and it really works. http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3360&Itemid=40
As for HDD... I think that in my laptop HDD is in separate and closed compartment (more investigation required ) so drilling a few holes should really improve it's cooling. Though I do not need extra cooling because (according to MobileMeter) my HDD temp is 41 Celsius max...

ADDED:
There is no connection between HDD temp and internal fan running or not. This fan only cools CPU and is triggered by CPU temp - 58C although there is heatpipe from GPU to heatsink.
So I believe that there is no airflow in HDD compartment but this could be just my laptop feature.
Please look at the attached picture. Long stable CPU temp is when external cooling unit was running then I turned it off an you can see temps variation.

 

My hard drive (sig) isn't any hotter than the 5400rpm Fujitsu it's replacing, so I've never really noticed heat issues. My old drive might find its way into an Xbox 360 hard drive mod.

 

Kinda makes me think extra vent holes may help with the temps.. Im in our build lab at HP and the drive is at 30C right now and wont go over that.. its freezing in here tho. Palm rest stays pretty cool in this room

 

Copyright, I notice in your sig you upgraded to a 7200rpm HD. I think thats where the problem starts as a 7200 rpm will generate the most heat, also its a Hitachi which sacrifices cooling for performance.

Segate HD's run cooler with a small performance decrease. Perhaps changing the HD to a Segate would be better. Also, unless you need the speed and if the heat is that bad, perhaps downgrading to a 5400 rpm HD is an option.

A 5400 rpm Segate will run much cooler than a 7200 rpm Hitachi for sure.

 

There is very little difference between the 5400 I had and the 7200 I now have.. both got the palm rest very warm to the point I cant tell the difference between the two.

 

I've come across this thread and will chuck in my two cents.

Some notebooks are better than others when it comes to keeping the hard disk cool. The worst I have come across was a Dell Inspiron 8000 where the HDD was in a carrier sitting over a hot part of the motherboard. Temperatures over 60°C were not unknown and people used to blame the SMART data as being wrong. I moved the HDD to another computer and the temperature dropped by more than 10°C.

A couple of years ago I had a Sony S series where the HDD stayed cool. When I came to remove the HDD I found it to be well covered in dust. When the CPU fan was running then cool air was being sucked in past the HDD, so the cool HDD was a by-product of the fan operation.

I then moved to an Asus W3A where the HDD was under the left palm rest and provided a good palm warmer in the winter but got unpleasantly warm in the summer. Although there were some air vents in the vicinity, they were evidently not very effective.

I now have a Samsung X60. The HDD is under the right palm rest and stays surprisingly cool in spite of no ventilation. The left palm rest gets much warmer. I'm currently using a Samsung HM160JI which I reckon is about 1°C cooler than the Seagate 120GB 5400.2 which it replaced. The HDD temperature only gets over 40°C under heavy usage.

John

 

I can see how having the HD on the right side would help. All of the hot components are on the left side of this notebook. If they would have just switched places with the expansion slot the heat would have been spread out better maybe resulting in some cooler components and not so much through the palmrest. They should have stuck something under the palmrest to stop the heat from coming through. Some sort of heat shelding. The only problem I see with that is the HD possibly not being able to cool its self properly. Ive used 3 different buisness lines at work and none of them get warm. Oh well.. I made the choice to purchase this notebook so I will live with it. Again, thanks for all the great info!

 

for those who say it's a pain to tote the targus chillpad, i may have a solution. i used velcro to temperarily attach the chillpad to the bottom of my gateway 15.4 in lappy. together, they fit nicely in my targus notebook bag for transport. just be careful to not block any vents when attaching. works nicely for me. together makes the height around 2.25 inches. good luck.

 

Was your original HDD a "Toshiba" ? Because mine doesn't heat-up at all, however it registers 51-C when working.