Hard Disk Drive Cooling

With appearance of the hard disk drives spinning at 7200rpm or faster users could recognize a strong heat generation during HDD's work period. Generally, the sources of heat are the positioning system of magnetic heads and drive spindle motor located in hermetic block, not the chips on the controller board. Magnetic disks are more sensitive to the higher temperature since degaussing and therefore data loss are occurred faster when heated. It is expressed in the direct dependence of count of hours of MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures).

	Dependence of the operating time on temperature
C o e f f i c i e n t
	Temperature (°C)

Temperature sensor was not included in the required minimum of SMART attributes so manufacturers started using different SMART attribute numbers containing information about temperature and temperature reference system (Celsius or Fahrenheit scale). "SMARTHDD" can automatically detect differences in devices implementation and cast temperature value to the uniform format.

For better cooling hard disk drive must not be pressed to the case on the top or at the bottom since this can complicate air circulation necessary for effective cooling. Due to the same reason it's necessary to avoid wires interlaces nearby the drive. Decrease of AAM and APM levels assists to the temperature lowering. As for reliability, the hard disk drive operation is not recommended at temperature higher than 55°C. At high temperature it is necessary to install additional fan providing active (forced) hard disk drive cooling into a computer. The reason which can make the user reject additional cooling is the noise from substandard fan or a high price on a qualitative cooling system, though usually a noise from additional fan is practically inaudible, especially against the background of another fans (central processor unit, video, supply unit).