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Hard Drive Cooling for 10 Cents

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sat Apr 23, 2005 08:38 AM
from the easy-fixes dept.
Hardware Hacking Data Storage Hardware
David Tiberio writes "I've bought many hard drive cooling solutions over the years, sometimes spending $50 or more on drive cooling systems that were noisy and did little to cool down the drive. After much tinkering, I discovered a simple solution that cost me only 10 cents per drive... the 1/2 inch bracket. Mounts any 80mm fan to the belly of an internal hard drive."
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  • 10c? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ElPresidente1972 (95949) on Saturday April 23 2005, @08:40AM (#12322208)
    Fan not included, I take it?

    (first post?)

    • Re:10c? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You have to take the fan out of the power supply to put on the hard drive bracket and then swap the case fan with the power supply fan because your power supply is over-heating and then go out and purchase a case fan because your system is getting too warm.

      So essentially. the hard drive fan is free. It is the case fan that costs you some dough...

    • Re:10c? (Score:5, Funny)

      by brunson (91995) * on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:30AM (#12322421) Homepage
      I found a way to get huge performance increases out of my Saturn for only 5 dollars.

      I take this $5 towstrap and attach it to the back of this Viper... suddenly my 0-60 times are are cut in half and my mileage is through the roof!

      Thanks, Slashdot.

    • Re:10c? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by heavy snowfall (847023) on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:39AM (#12322461) Journal
      No, but he's happy to tell you where to buy them.

      Approximate quote from TFA: "you can buy fans here ( http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-1651435-54502),
      This is just another case of Roland Piquepaille... Check out the top level of his domain too, it's just an ad site...

      1. Create site about obvious hack with refferer commision links.
      2. Post your site on high volume site like /.
      3. Profit.

      4. Piss me off for wasting my time. I even wasted my time typing this up, I'm sure some "people have a right to profit" dude will mod me down.

  • Thanks (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 23 2005, @08:40AM (#12322209)
    Did we really need an article on Slashdot to figure this one out? ;-)

    • Re:Thanks (Score:3, Insightful)

      by huber (723453)
      No. But thats the beauty of slashdot.

    • Re:Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 2TecTom (311314) on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:13AM (#12322364) Journal
      Were you doing it? No, I thought not. Evidently then, yes, yes we did need a /. article.

      Actually, it's a clever hack in the true sense of the word, so yes, it's even somewhat approriate given the audience.

      Oh, and I've seen a lot worse from the /. tyrants. Democracy is such a great thing, it's just too bad we're never allowed to actually have it.

          • Request for fan filter material info (Score:5, Interesting)

            by btarval (874919) on Saturday April 23 2005, @11:59AM (#12323302)
            Thanks for posting that; I found it interesting.

            This brings up a related subject, namely, putting a filter in front of the fan to filter out dust. Antec rackmount cases have a great solution, namely a removeable tray in front of the fan. The tray comes with a spongy filter type of material which is anti-static.

            I've tried finding a raw source for this material, with no luck. Does anyone know where one might find this?

            Basically I'd like to get a large sheet of this, and cut it up appropriately for all of the various fans that I have. I'd really like to reduce the dust in my systems.

            If anyone knows of a source for the raw anti-static material in large quantities, I'd appreciate knowing it. Thanks in advance.

            • I'd suggest your local hardware store/Canadian tire ... buy a furnace filter (About $5) and cut chunks out of it to the right size. maybe get some strips of velcro at the same hardware store. put a bit in each corner of the fan and a bit on the filter and voila .. easy to change and secure for about $6. And given the size of furance air filters, one should last you a year or more.

            • Re:I call this BS (Score:5, Interesting)

              by tomhudson (43916) <hudsonNO@SPAMvideotron.ca> on Saturday April 23 2005, @02:30PM (#12324241) Journal
              It's definitely bullshit, but not for the reasons given. This has been covered before (yeah, dupe article, so what the fuck else is new).

              Unmount your hard drive (but leave the cables attached) and power up the system. Touch your hard drave - can you even tell that its spinning? No vibrations.

              Now, mount a cheapie fan to it, and touch it - a LOT more vibrations. And it will only get worse as the fan wears.

              Anyone who mounts fans to their hard drives to cool them deserves what they get - you'll be losing data within a few months, and probably end up with a completely fucked drive.

    • Just wait until you see the next story, which extolls the incredible power of . . . string.

      KFG

  • only 10c for a bracket. Oh and a fan. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 23 2005, @08:42AM (#12322216)
    Uhh that sounds like Microsoft costing.

    MS: "We can help you serve customers for only 10c a day!"
    Manager: "woohoo. Approved!"
    MS: "So your bill is $36.50 for the first year, plus $899 site license, plus $299 Windows licenses for each CPU plus $1599 service contract plus...."

    • Re:only 10c for a bracket. Oh and a fan. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Deagol (323173) on Saturday April 23 2005, @10:22AM (#12322656) Homepage
      (I think that the article was worth while, and I'll personally take ths simple idea into account when trying to rig a new box on the cheap.)

      But back to the parent post...

      It *is* kinda funny, the 10-cent claim. I read a lot of those backwoods and country living kinds of managzines. They're usually full of great projects that the average person can usually pull off to some degree.

      What kills me is often the low-cost claims: "Build a central, forced-air wood heating system for only $10 !" Sounds really cool, until you read the article and find that the person already had a house's worth of air duct on-hand, an arc welder, and a friend who gave him enough plate steel for the furnace in exchange for a dozen eggs and a case of beer. :)

      These articles are still great, as they illustrate the make-due-with-what-you-have mentaility. However, a little truth in advertising would be appreciated. :)

      • I have never met anyone that expressed a need to specifically add cooling to their hard disk in the first place. Hard disks come factory sealed and if one is overheating it is defective or absorbing heat generated from other sources, like maybe a hot CPU. Cool the CPU.

        Or is he overclocking his disk from 7k rpm to 14krpm somehow? Don't get too close to that machine.

        Is this guy selling a solution to a frictional problem or a fictional problem? Shheeeez.

  • Wow. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chess_the_cat (653159) on Saturday April 23 2005, @08:43AM (#12322222) Homepage
    Who knew you could attach things to other things using a bracket and screws? Thanks again Slashdot.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariDatacenter (31657) on Saturday April 23 2005, @08:44AM (#12322228) Homepage
    Your data called.
    It wants the integrity of its magnetic field back.

    • Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jeff DeMaagd (2015) on Saturday April 23 2005, @08:52AM (#12322274) Homepage Journal
      The magnetic field produced by a small DC fan might not be enough to faze the platter. It takes a magnetic field of a certain strength to make a change in the data bits.

      I have a few Compaq Xeon workstations that placed the drives transversely in front of the system power supply so cooling air can pass between the drives. I have yet to see a problem. It's designed to cool 15k RPM drives very quietly. The PSU fan itself is a slower 12cm fan, placed on the intake of the PSU, only a few cm away from the drive's edges. It's very quiet for a PC, and very impressively quiet for a system with a 15k RPM drive in it.

    • Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)

      by neverpsyked (578012) <atakins@gmail . c om> on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:34AM (#12322438) Homepage
      A boss of mine who used to work for Air Force Intel told me that the magnetic field used to de-gauss an HDD had to be about as strong as a car-lifting magnet. I seriously doubt that the field generated by an 80mm fan is even enough to penetrate the steel housing of the drive (maybe not even the circuit board, since it's bottom-mounted).

        • Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by tzanger (1575) <akohlsmith-sd@mixd[ ].ca ['own' in gap]> on Saturday April 23 2005, @12:06PM (#12323353) Homepage

          I've managed, unfortunately, to fry a pda that way. Pda was in my pants pocket. I was drilling holes in my wall. The EM field from the drill fried the motherboard. And they weren't that close together...

          Bullshit. I am an embedded systems designer and there's no way in hell your drill induced enough of an EM field to generate significant current in the traces of your PDA's mainboard. The stuff I design is strapped on to heatsink with thousands of Amps running through it without any kind of EMC protection and it runs flawlessly. Static discharge is more likely than not the cause of that particular failure.

  • Good for one drive but ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by black_rock (871751) on Saturday April 23 2005, @08:44AM (#12322229)
    what about when you have several drives or a tiny case?

  • Yeah! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ArAgost (853804) on Saturday April 23 2005, @08:44AM (#12322233) Homepage
    *This* is top-grade engineering! This could be used to cool down spacecraft re-entering earth atmosphere :|

  • Classic case of a measurement mistaken for reality (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arivanov (12034) on Saturday April 23 2005, @08:46AM (#12322246) Homepage
    Well... Most S.M.A.R.T. temperature sensors are on the PCB and they are measuring PCB temperature instead of the internal drive temperature.

    Hence, a fan under the disk makes a lot of difference while making very little to make your data safer.

    A 3x 40mm fan battery in front of a drive or a pressed enclosure that cools the actual package holding the platters makes a lot of difference there while not chaning the S.M.A.R.T. reading by more then a degree or so.

    It is up to you - what do you want. Show (a good reading) or substance (good temperature of your drive platters and heads).

    • Re:Classic case of a measurement mistaken for real (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RubberDogBone (851604) on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:12AM (#12322361)
      Yeah. LOL. It's not the PCB that gets hot anyway, at least not on my drives.

      The heat is in the disc, the drive motor, and related surfaces. Some of them can get quite hot. I still have some (working!) giant SCSI bricks that get hot enough to burn flesh.

      Full height 5.25 drives that would burn fingers and break your foot too, if you dropped it. I think it weighs close to 10 pounds. It'd probably still work after the fall but it only holds 1 gig or something. Not worth a bother.

      Anyway, I cool my drives with a 120v turbine fan that blows sideways across the whole drive. The air cools the disc side and the PCB side. Works great. Doesn't tax the system PSU.

      • Re:Classic case of a measurement mistaken for real (Score:4, Informative)

        by YoungHack (36385) on Saturday April 23 2005, @11:40AM (#12323169)
        I have been lead to understand that drives don't typically fail because their platters got hot. They tend to fail because their circuit boards fail. You'll find advice all over the internet suggesting that you try to fix a broken drive by swapping the circuit board from another of the same model before purchasing expensive data reclamation.

        In that context, this fellow's solution doesn't seem so irrelevant. Keeping the circuit board cool is likely to lengthen the life of the drive.
        • For what it's worth, try holding your hand in the airflow of a fan some time. It feels a lot stronger on the side the fan blows on to compared to the one the fan sucks the air from. Obviously, the same amount of air has to be blown out as sucked in, but blewn out air is accelerated in a certain direction giving it more power. It's not that much of a difference, anyway - people who experiment with switching on their CPU heatsink/fan typically end up with only a few degrees of temperature difference. Most mod
        • Sure.

          Do you have a fan handy? Any sort of window fan or table fan will do, or even one of those 80mm computer fans.

          Power it up and aim the air at your face. You should feel a cooling effect, maybe even a lot of cooling if it's a strong fan. Move the fan away a little. Distance decreases the effect but it's probably still noticable, right?

          Now turn the fan around. No effect at all at a distance. Move it closer. Still nothing. You're going to have to put your face right up next to the fan to feel an
        • The other replies to your question are good.

          But there's more to the answer than they realize.

          Let me start with a story...

          At my first job about 10 years ago, I wound up helping out at the IT department of a cellular phone company (no, a real cell phone manufacturer, not a service provider). One of the first tasks I had was to replace the CPU cooling fans on a few Sun desktop workstations. At the time, these Sun systems were incredibly expensive - about $40K each if I remember correctly. That, coupled w

  • Vibration (Score:5, Informative)

    by darkwiz (114416) on Saturday April 23 2005, @08:53AM (#12322280)
    If you decide to go with this kind of setup, try to make sure you use a fan with low vibration (well balanced, low speed). The last thing you need with a hard drive is more vibration. The drive head is only flying a few hundred molecules above the drive surface.

    It may not amount to much as the vibration needs to be of the right frequency to be really bad. But it is probably better to err on the side of caution with drive lifetimes already being as bad as they are.

    I personally use a 120mm fan that is mounted on rubber pegs, perpendicular to the hard drives, but not mounted to the drives themselves. This way, less vibration is transferred to the drives.

        • Re:Vibration (Score:4, Interesting)

          by evilviper (135110) on Saturday April 23 2005, @02:39PM (#12324290) Journal
          That's idiotic. What if everyone in China jumps up and down at the same time, thus moving the earth in its orbit?

          Simple, we'll outsource the job to India, paying them to jump up at the same time the Chinese land, and land the same time the Chinese jump.

          With the nearly identical population size, and geographical proximity, this should counteract the forces, or perhaps send the earth hurtling into the sun... Either way.

  • HD Cooling? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MankyD (567984) on Saturday April 23 2005, @08:55AM (#12322285) Homepage
    I've seen a few HD coolers. This seems to work alright.

    My question is - why? I guess I've never really heard of anyone over-cloking there hd's. Do they really overheat? How can you tell? When should you worry about it?

    • Re:HD Cooling? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:03AM (#12322320)
      Some 7500RPM or higher drives that aren't well engineered can overheat in small spaces.

      I personally had a Western Digital 80gb harddrive overheat and cause errors in a normal midtower. (Several of my friends had the same problem with the same model)

      Since then my addage is if it's 7500rpm or higher put some fans on it. Since that realization I've had no problems.

  • call me silly.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zakezuke (229119) on Saturday April 23 2005, @08:55AM (#12322287)
    ... but would it not make more sense to either

    1. mount a 90mm fan on the front of your 3.5 inch bays.
    2. mount a 120mm fan on the front of your 5.25 inch bays.

    This way you actually get airflow for 2 to 3 drives rather than blocking airflow with another damn drive.

  • More noise ! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bushboy (112290) <lttc@lefthandedmonkeys.org> on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:07AM (#12322344) Homepage
    I've got a fan in my PSU, over my GPU, my CPU.

    It already sounds like a bloody helicopter and now you want me to spend 10cents making it even louder !

    Wow !

  • Woah! I was so close! (Score:5, Funny)

    by orionware (575549) on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:25AM (#12322402)
    I was mounting the fan on the OUTSIDe of the case. I was alot cooler but that damn drives kept getting hot! I was so close...

  • Heatpipe coolers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Richard_J_N (631241) on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:35AM (#12322443)
    I find this sort of cooler much more useful:
    http://www.quietpc.com/uk/harddrive.php#z m2hc2

    The heatpipes per se only make a small difference to the temperature (perhaps 6-10 degrees?), but the rubber mounts do a fabulous job of reducing the noise.

  • Come on SLASHDOT!!! GRRRRRRRRR (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ServeYourWorld (762879) on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:36AM (#12322448)
    This is obviously just a ploy to make some money. The guy has an affiliate link to PCMALL. He is hoping some people click and buy some other stuff along with the screw. Can we get back to real news?

  • Top 5 things wrong with this setup... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by toofast (20646) on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:54AM (#12322535) Homepage

    1. Running 2 drives as RAID-1 with a spare souunds less efficient than just running RAID-1 for the OS partition and RAID-5 for the data. RAID-5 is faster for writes than RAID-1, but RAID-1 offers protection for the boot OS

    2. One fan per drive seems inefficient, and it will increase the power consumption of the box as a whole - not including the wasted space.

    3. Mounting a large fan with one single bracket would make the fam vibrate and not be mounted in a sturdy fashion

    4. The title doesn't include the cost of the fans. If he has three drives, three fans, three brackets, we're looking at about $20

    5. All these extra fans brings us back to the age of the noisy PC. So passé.

    My suggestion? A good Antec case with proper ventilation holes at the front and a 120mm fan at the rear. If you have three or more drives, add an 80mm fan at the front, blowing air on the drives in the same direction the air is pulled in from the 120mm. It's not the low temp of the drives that matters, it's air circulation + consistent temp.

  • Be Careful (Score:5, Funny)

    by Waffle Iron (339739) on Saturday April 23 2005, @10:11AM (#12322617)
    I also tried mounting a fan to my hard drive with an angle bracket. I found out that you need to be really careful about how deep you drill and tap the mounting holes into the drive.

    I used 1/2-inch deep holes, and the drive wouldn't even fire up when I tried to boot. It turned out that the drive had really flimsy construction, and they had moving parts right under the surface that were immobilized by the screws. The cheap POS wouldn't even work after I took the screws back out.

    If you plan to do this, I'd recommend using very short screws; probably no more than 1/8-inch.

  • A better idea... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eyeball97 (816684) on Saturday April 23 2005, @10:41AM (#12322744) Homepage
    You don't need a fan.

    All you need is the blade from an old fan, a toothpick, and a 2mm drill.

    1. Drill a hole in the drive directly above the platters
    2. With some superglue on the end of the toothpick, insert it in the hole so that it sticks to the spindle
    3. Glue the blade to the other end of the toothpick.

    Now you see, no need for a fan. As long as your drive's running, the fan blade you just installed will be spinning at 5400 (or whatever rpm) your drive is.

    Much cheaper than $0.10.

  • New book about this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KrackHouse (628313) on Saturday April 23 2005, @11:06AM (#12322929) Homepage
    An MIT prof just released a new book that you can read online [mit.edu] called Democratizing Innovation. I haven't read the whole thing yet but it looks like he may be on to something. Also see Pro-Am Revolution [demos.co.uk].

  • Big Mistake in the article: Use only nylon straps as brackets. A metal strap conducts the fan vibration to the hard drive.
  • This is a great idea if all you needed to do was cool the circuit board. The fans don't effectively cool the platters, though, and sometimes that thermistor that tells you the temperature is mounted on the same side as the circuit board, getting cooled by that fan, and showing you lower temperatures, but the platters are still running hot.

    • Re:Airflow? (Score:3, Informative)

      by MankyD (567984)
      You don't [wikipedia.org]?
    • Uhh... yes, yes you do.

      The CPU fan takes surrounding air, blowing it down towards the CPU and forcing it through the vanes of the heat sink.

      Push or pull, the main point in drive cooling is to move around the air so that hot pockets don't form around them, and the hot air is more likely to be vented by the case fans.

    • Re:Airflow? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dashing Leech (688077) on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:08AM (#12322346)
      "Wouldn't it make more sense to pull the air away from the drive?"

      Absolutely. That's why on hot summer days I sit behind a nice cool fan facing away from me.

      • Re:Airflow? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cliffy2000 (185461) on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:14AM (#12322366) Journal
        You sit in front of a fan to move that encourage the evaporation (i.e., cooling process) of that hot sweat off your body by increasing the coefficient of conduction of air. Unless you have a sweaty fan, you should be moving the air away from it.

    • Re:Airflow? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by v1 (525388) on Saturday April 23 2005, @09:27AM (#12322413) Homepage Journal
      Whether the fan is blowing toward the heat sink, pushing in cooler air and displacing hot air in all other directions, or blowing away from the heat sink, pushing hot air away in a specific direction and pulling in cooler air in from all other directions, the same thing is being accomplished - warm air removed from the vacinity of the heat sink and cooler air replacing it.

      The only real difference is where you are pushing the warmer air - with an intake fan the hot air gets pushed usually to the sides of the heat sink, and can raise the temperature of nearby components - with an exhaust fan you direct the warmer air usually up and away from the board. (and possibly onto something else you'd rather not heat up, like your hard drive) Although with an exhaust fan you are pulling air into the heat sink from nearby components, which could in itself reduce the cooling efficiency of your heat sink, while benefiting nearby components.

      So choosing between exhaust and intake probably depends a lot on the physical layout of your case. A universal good selection would probably be exhaust that takes the air directly to the outside of the case.

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