Drive overheating?

fabre · Post by **fabre** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 3:32 pm

Found my pc frozen this morning, I rebooted and it froze again back in windows.
So I booted Debian from my second drive and it took an eternity to load and even once in the desktop it still took ages to open anything.

So I figured something might be wrong with that drive, I unplugged it and no more freeze.

Now I plugged it back and started monitoring the drives with speedfan.

Drive A has the windows system and a couple more partitions
Drive B is used to store data and also has Debian on a separate partition

Surprisingly Drive B despite being Idle is running much hotter than Drive A

Right now Drive B is 43c and Drive A (running OS) is only 37c

I am not sure if the issue is cooling or a defective drive (ran WD diagnostic tool but it didn't report any errors)

I thought the way I positioned the drive they would receive the same amount of cooling from the Yale Loon @ 5v

fabre · Post by **fabre** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 5:02 pm

Update temp are now

Drive A 39c
Drive B 46c

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 6:22 pm

There is a good chance that the drives are actually 1-2C diffent, but temp reporting is usually wrong anyway.

Have you tried the finger test.???

Do you trust WD's diagnostics, I dont..................

If you are suspecting a drive of going bad, back everything up, and test the hell out of it. If you dont have any problems drink some beer, that will help you persuade yourself that there really isnt anything to worry about

But then again "just because youre paranoid it doesnt mean they wont get you"

Andy

fabre · Post by **fabre** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 7:13 pm

Already backup everything after it froze a couple of time on me.

Yeah wasn't convinced by WD diagnostic tool either, especially after Debian reported corrupt data on a fresh install.

Anyway I am going to log the HDD temperature for a couple of days if it freeze again I will know for sure if it'temp related or not.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 2:27 am

Those temps look fine. I would think the drive is just going bad way before i thought it was overheating with those temps.

It happens occasionally. I had it happen once. At least in your case, you had time to back everything up before you replace it. I lost alot of mp3's and data when i lost my drive.

kesv · Post by **kesv** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 3:41 am

fabre wrote: Yeah wasn't convinced by WD diagnostic tool either, especially after Debian reported corrupt data on a fresh install.

Since you are running Debian use smartmontools to look at the SMART data from that drive. Also run the long smart selftest. If there is something wrong with the drive it should show up there.

fabre · Post by **fabre** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 2:33 pm

Look like it was my mistake.

After playing for a bit I saw the drive temp had reached 55c

Opened the case to check the drives and both were very warm to the touch, started cursing the D12SL-12 for providing so little airflow at 5v when upon closer inspection I realized that when I replaced the 120mm Silenblades I mounted the front fan the wrong way....

So effectively the fan was sucking the case hot air in the drive bay and with the SLK300B front bezel being so restrictive, it was probably creating a pocket of hot air that was slowly cooking the drives.

PopCorn · Post by **PopCorn** » Mon Dec 18, 2006 1:00 pm

sorry to laught but when i read ur last post it made me laugh... i have made so many under looked mistakes like mounting the harddrives faceing the wrong way... trying to power up a new build when i never connected the 24 pin power cord...... hareing that you did makes me feel less like a retard .... happy your drive isnt dead though

fabre · Post by **fabre** » Mon Dec 18, 2006 1:13 pm

I am still wondering how I managed to mount it the wrong way, I am pretty sure I checked the airflow direction like I always do, guess I got distracted some where between the checking and the mounting

PopCorn · Post by **PopCorn** » Mon Dec 18, 2006 1:53 pm

its alright we all make retarded mistakes... My personal worse is putting a heatsink on with out the cpu in

( i was watching a football game)

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Mon Dec 18, 2006 3:50 pm

Thats pretty funny, but also good that you found your problem, and hopefully there is no permanent damage.

FYI one stupid thing I did was check a PSU, it was faulty, replace the PSU with a new one, attach it to the PC, the motherboard was faulty, repace motherboard, that was faulty, dissapear for a while swear a lot, and drink some tea while browzing the net. I went back to it and realised my problem straight away, the mains plug was not plugged in except for when I tested the bad PSU, (we have lots of spare cables ready to use), and both motherboards were fine, it was just the original PSU.

Popcorn, you must have had the coolest socket in town

Andy

PopCorn · Post by **PopCorn** » Mon Dec 18, 2006 4:12 pm

well now that he found out why his comp was freezing, im gonna topic :Retarded mistakes.... itll be under off topic