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From: brassplyer on 20 Dec 2009 05:48
Got a WD Elements 1TB external. This is the first such drive I've seen
that has NO ventilation slots whatsoever. Just a black case. It's my
understanding that cooling is critical for drive longevity. When I run
externals I also have a fan blowing over them - from a distance to
avoid the magnetic field from the fan affecting the drive.

I also have a WD Notebook drive that the interface circuitry died on
so now have it running internally as a SATA drive, so am particularly
leery about this no vent hole construction.

Any thoughts?
From: Paul on 20 Dec 2009 13:52
brassplyer wrote:
> Got a WD Elements 1TB external. This is the first such drive I've seen
> that has NO ventilation slots whatsoever. Just a black case. It's my
> understanding that cooling is critical for drive longevity. When I run
> externals I also have a fan blowing over them - from a distance to
> avoid the magnetic field from the fan affecting the drive.
>
> I also have a WD Notebook drive that the interface circuitry died on
> so now have it running internally as a SATA drive, so am particularly
> leery about this no vent hole construction.
>
> Any thoughts?

The magnetic field from the motor should not affect the platters.

I've done some reading on that, and the situation used to be,
that longitudinal recording is quite resistant to external fields.
This is one of the reasons, that using degaussing coils as a
means to securely erase disks is perilous. The degaussing coil
is likely to damage something mechanically when it is used (so the
drive could be rendered useless from a reuse perspective), but
may not succeed in erasing all the field on the platter. If the
platter is transferred to another housing with working head assembly,
it might be recovered.

Think about those magnets located under the actuator arm (under
the plate in the picture). The field from those can't be entirely
contained by that assembly, so there would be a much stronger stray
field from that. If they were trying to completely contain the field,
they'd have surrounded that thing with annealed mu-metal.

http://www.pcdoctor-guide.com/wordpress/images/6%20-%20open2.jpg

One article I read, mentioned that the new perpendicular recording
used on high density drives (like your 1TB), are more sensitive to
external fields. But the manufacturer has worked on the structures
inside the drive to minimize the effect. In their words, the new
drives are no more sensitive to external fields, than the old ones
were.

They do place brushless DC fans in external hard drive enclosures,
and I haven't read of any rash of erasures. Some enclosures even use
an 80mm mounted underneath the body of the drive, which would surely
have exposed the drive to a small field.

As to what to do with your drive, that depends on how hard it is to
open the enclosure.

The answer to your question is, to not buy products like that in the
first place. I'm a believer in fan cooling, like you are, and to get
the features I want in an external drive, I build up my own with
a raw drive and separate enclosure. That way, I can shop for the
features I want.

(There aren't that many to choose from, and this is a random example.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817106114

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/17-106-114-V01?$S640W$

(This Syba one is a bit more artistic.)

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/17-801-047-S05?$S640W$

Retrofitting cooling on your drive, will depend on how difficult it
is to get inside, and whether any warranty is voided by removing a label
stuck over one of the screws. Some of those pre-packaged drive have
hidden screws - if you search the web, occasionally someone will
reveal the secret of how to get them apart without damaging them.

This is the last enclosure I bought - it has a 40mm fan in the
back, and grill in the front. But being IDE, I doubt they're
still shipping these. And this one is actually a 5.25", with
poor provision for s 3.5" drive. But I have placed a hard
drive in it on occasion anyway :-) Normally, it holds
an IDE DVD burner.

http://www.startech.com/Share/Gallery/Large/IDECASE525U2.Elarge.jpg

Paul
From: brassplyer on 20 Dec 2009 17:23
On Dec 20, 1:52 pm, Paul <nos...(a)needed.com> wrote:

> Retrofitting cooling on your drive, will depend on how difficult it
> is to get inside, and whether any warranty is voided by removing a label
> stuck over one of the screws. Some of those pre-packaged drive have
> hidden screws - if you search the web, occasionally someone will
> reveal the secret of how to get them apart without damaging them.


You read my mind, I'm probably gonna make my own vent holes - at a net
cost of about $50 for a TB of drive space (how much would a TB have
cost 10 years ago?) the warranty isn't really a big consideration,
hardly worth the effort of jumping through the hoops - it would
probably cost $15 just to ship the thing for warranty service/
replacement, plus time at the post office etc.
From: Knut Otterbeck on 21 Dec 2009 22:26
Hi,

I think your drive spins down when not in activity. You should have no
problems with it. It should be at least as long lasting (if not even longer
lasting) than your average internal PC HD , bacause it is securely placed in
the enclosure. Your typical internal PC HD will be moved from time to time ,
being more prone to damage / shortcircuits/etc. than your external drive.

Greetings, Knut

"brassplyer" <brassplyer(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:72667548-3014-4d00-8851-ffdf81445525(a)d20g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
On Dec 20, 1:52 pm, Paul <nos...(a)needed.com> wrote:

> Retrofitting cooling on your drive, will depend on how difficult it
> is to get inside, and whether any warranty is voided by removing a label
> stuck over one of the screws. Some of those pre-packaged drive have
> hidden screws - if you search the web, occasionally someone will
> reveal the secret of how to get them apart without damaging them.


You read my mind, I'm probably gonna make my own vent holes - at a net
cost of about $50 for a TB of drive space (how much would a TB have
cost 10 years ago?) the warranty isn't really a big consideration,
hardly worth the effort of jumping through the hoops - it would
probably cost $15 just to ship the thing for warranty service/
replacement, plus time at the post office etc.


From: larry moe 'n curly on 22 Dec 2009 06:11


brassplyer wrote:

> Got a WD Elements 1TB external. This is the first such drive I've seen
> that has NO ventilation slots whatsoever. Just a black case. It's my
> understanding that cooling is critical for drive longevity. When I run
> externals I also have a fan blowing over them - from a distance to
> avoid the magnetic field from the fan affecting the drive.
>
> I also have a WD Notebook drive that the interface circuitry died on
> so now have it running internally as a SATA drive, so am particularly
> leery about this no vent hole construction.

Are you sure the notebook drive's USB-SATA interface didn't get zapped
by static electricity? I know USB is designed to withstand at least
12,000 volts and hot plugging, but it's not that hard to generate
12,000 volts, and I had a USB PCI card go bad because the very chip
designed to protect against hot plugging damage was damaged by....hot
plugging. OTOH 2.5" notebook HDs, even 7200 RPM ones, don't seem to
get very hot, even inside completely unventilated cases.

I bought a 3.5" WD Passport with no vent holes, and I think its 5400
RPM Green drive runs about as hot as my desktop's 7200 RPM mounted
horizontally with 1" of air space on top and bottom. OTOH my 7200 RPM
WD Elements ran much hotter in its barely ventilated aluminum case, so
I drilled holes near the front of the bottom and the rear of the top
(I wanted the air to flow all over the HD, not just at the front or
rear).
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