HDD Overheat?

[buzzard34]

Hey, something weird happened to me last night. I was downloading some patches from windows update when i got the Blue screen of death. The strange thing is I'm running WinXP, where you're not supposed to get that screen. I'm thinking my HDD overheated (Its a WDC 60gb EIDE, not special edition) but my system temp when i rebooted was only about 114F. I'm thinking the HDD overheated because for a while the computer couldn't detect a HDD. When i turned it off and started it up again after letting the whole thing cool (for about 15 min), it worked fine. Did my HDD overheat, and what should i do to prevent this from happening again?

 

[Ice Czar]

your SYSTEM temperature was 114F?
where are you the Sahara?

your SYS temp should be equal to the room temp (ideally) or a few degrees higher

if that was indeed your SYS temp, then the CPU probably overheated (heatsink couldnt transfer the heat well, and that caused the crash)

General Heat Transfer Guide @ amdmb

"heat transfer is proportional to the temperature difference on the object. If the temperature differential doubles, the heat transferred doubles. Second, the conduction coefficient "k" is proportional to heat transfer. If the conduction coefficient doubles, the heat transfer doubles

thats for conduction but the basics also apply to convection per Newton's Law of Cooling

 

[buzzard34]

No wait sorry my CPU temp was 114, and my SYSTEM temp was 73F

Bought a HDD cooler. Was it worth it if my problem really was an overheated drive?

 

[Ice Czar]

its worth it any way you cut it, up till the 2.5" HDD form factor replaces the current 3.5" and you completely switch over to the smaller drives

like any mechanical device a Hard Drive will benefit from being cooler

Each 10°C (18°F) temperature rise reduces component life by 50%*.
Conversely, each 10°C (18°F) temperature reduction increases component life by 100%.
the Arrhenius equation
http://www.shodor.org/UNChem/advanced/kin/arrhenius.html

which is equally applicable to semiconductors (Integrated Circuits like a CPU or RAM Chip) but that equation is just a rule of thumb

however, Im pretty sure it wasnt the HDD that caused the original problem