Hard drives are heating up. This is especially true for models with a reading head rotation speed above 7200 rpm. Most of these models work normally at 40-50C, but in the summer, hard drives overheat more. At temperatures above 70C, there is a danger that the disk will fail. What is the reason? What if this happens?
Overheating reasons
The most common reasons are listed below.
- Proximity to other elements of the computer. Since all parts of a modern computer generate heat, it is not recommended to place a hard drive too close to other hard drives, optical drives, video card or processor.
- The life of a hard disk is on average 5-6 years; after the expiration date, it is highly likely that the disk will become unstable. This will manifest itself, including through overheating.
- Insufficient ventilation inside the computer. Fans work worse due to accumulated dust.
- Oxidation of contacts. The bottom of the hard drive is vulnerable because it is not covered by a shroud. Because of this, the contacts on the hard disk board are oxidized and it heats up.
- The ribbon cable connecting the hard drive to the motherboard has come off. The current will constantly "jump" along the contact track of the plug, leading to unstable operation and overheating.
Useful article: "Hard disk space: why less than it should be?"
How to determine the temperature?
The most reliable way is software. There are a lot of utilities on the network that will make it possible to monitor the temperature of the hard drive. For example, you can use the utilities HDDlife Pro and HWMonitor, SpeedFan. In addition, an overheating hard drive has a slow response time and a slow copying speed. The windows of the HWMonitor and SpeedFan programs are shown below. The temperature indicators of the hard drives are highlighted in red.
Also, uncharacteristic sounds during operation indicate overheating. True, this already indicates serious problems. In this case, you must immediately copy the valuable information to another medium.
What is the danger of overheating?
Critical temperatures start after 60C. Overheating of the hard drive will damage the magnetic coating and “drop out” sectors, which can lead to loss of data. Only qualified specialists will be able to restore damaged sectors. This procedure costs money and does not always end with a complete recovery of information.
How to prevent overheating?
The best way to prevent overheating is good ventilation. Modern computer cases have several locations for installing fans. Not all computers are fully equipped with fans. Check if there are fans everywhere and if there are empty spaces, install additional ones (the illustration below shows the computer case and fan installation locations). For additional fan control, you can use the same SpeedFan program.
You can see an overview of one of these cases below.
