Hard Disk Drives getting HOT help needed Please

[MagicBytes]

Hello to all, I have two striped Samsung SATAII hard disk drives mounted in two iCute Mobile racks MRA201 which is mounted in a Usicase Tower 2 x 5.25" bays, I got a message telling me that my RAID has got a problem and is no longer functioning, but nothing really happened, Windows did not shut down or lock up, so I switched of my pc and turn off the power switch on the back of my tower and then took out my drives and noticed they where fairly HOT, I estimated about 80 Degress Celcius or 176 Fahrenheit, the room temperature is 25 Degress Celcius or 77 Degress Fahrenheit, all fans on my pc are currently opperating, covers are on the case, I am NOT over clocking my CPU, why would this be happening please.

My 2 hard drives are 160GB Samsung HD161HJ

[arthurleung]

I don't think you can estimate temperature, 55'C+ will feel the same to you. 80'C will definitely kill a harddrive and also burn your finger quite badly.

Harddrives generate about 10W of heat, and in a (crappy) enclosure, especially a poorly ventilated mobile rack they can get quite hot and essentially kill your drives if they're run 7x24.

These mobile rack are designed for single-hdd use only so they depends on conduction (contact with the DVDROM next to it and the computer case / convection for cooling (spacing above and below). If you run two on top of each other(which seems to be your case) The cooling capability would be a fraction of the required.

Solution: (Pick One)
1. Put one rack in the top 5.25" bay and one in the bottom 5.25" bay
2. Only use one rack

If you have empty 5.25" bays adjacent to the rack, leave the bay cover open so that air can pass through it.

However I would strongly recommend you to replace your 2x160GB drives as they have been "fried" and will not run reliably anymore. If you are running RAID1 you may continue to use the disks until one of them fail.

If the drives show SMART error you could probably RMA them.

[s_kinton]

You cant estimate the temperature accurately. You need to use a program like Everest or HDTach to display the drives SMART information, which will include the drives current temps

[MagicBytes]

Hello every one, thanks for the replies and all the advice, but I have since un striped my SATAII drives and just using the SATAII drives as a single drive and reinstalled my Windows operating system and now the drive is much much cooler.

I don't know why they run hot when I stripe them.

Cheers from MagicBytes

[IAmATeaf]

Hello every one, thanks for the replies and all the advice, but I have since un striped my SATAII drives and just using the SATAII drives as a single drive and reinstalled my Windows operating system and now the drive is much much cooler.

I don't know why they run hot when I stripe them.

Cheers from MagicBytes

Simple answer cause in striped mode both drives are being accessed for every single drive operation.