Do external USB hard drives run warm ?

rrh

rrh

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Hi -

I recently added a Seagate 2TB external USB drive to a home server for backup.

Once or twice a day the server's SMART drive monitoring reports that the drive is running warm, a non-critical error.

  • The report is generated at times other than the time at which the server backup is running e.g. 05h30 (when it's pretty cold).
  • The fault is automatically cleared a short while later.
Should I be worried ?
 
External 3.5" hard drives will always run warm when powered on should be warm on idle and run a bit hotter when in use, depending on the make, casing, etc - what model Seagate external do you have?
I'm unsure about the SMART reports, as you say this happens at those time when the drive is not in use, and it's colder. What temperature is reported when this non-critical is triggered?
I have a Seagate drive outside of a case, that plugs into my chassis' external SATA port - this runs very warm when in use (hot to touch), and is just warm when on idle - it's never bothered me, however if the drive was in an external case, it may get quite hot...
 
The disk drive in question is a Seagate GoFlex 2TB.

From what I've read SMART can be less than totally reliable, so it may just be SMART being temperamental.

The drive itself is cool to the touch, and since it only contains only backups (of backups) I'm not overly concerned if it fails.
 
Lots of thinks influence the temperature, if you think of the drive you're talking about it's spinning in a plastic case with little or no ventilation so it will get hot. However, anything even into the 50's is safe for the most part, when you get into the 60s then start to worry. SMART will give you the minimum and maximum temps the drive has reached in it's life as well if you want to view that info.

Drives are designed to run hot, ie hotter than room temperature. Here are the temps that the drives connected up to the machine I'm typing this on are running at: http://i40.tinypic.com/ae8v3d.png

They range from 25 to 49, the 25 degree one is a WD 3TB drive in the tower with a fan close to it, the 49 degree drive is a Seagate external 3TB, the reason for it running so much hotter is due to the plastic external housing. They are both perfectly healthy and will be quite happy at those temps.

Try to keep the temp constant, give them a bit of ventilation and you shouldn't have any issues (heat issues).
 
I lost 2 drives to overheating in the last 2 years - 500 gig + 2T
Now when I backup distros that takes more than 15 minutes ;-) I always use a small domestic fan running at speed 1 to keep things cool - winter and summer
Not taking chances anymore
 
SouthBit said:
How do you know overheating was the cause?
Click to expand...

Aluminium enclosure in both cases - could fry eggs on them - Iomega was the worst

I found the newer Samsung external drives with the perforated plastic case, to run the coolest of my 8 external drives
 
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