I replaced my old IDE 80 Gb western digital Caviar, with a SATA 160 GB one, and it seems to run very hot compared the the same one in my other PC (dell XPS400, runs at 30 degrees, mine runs at 54-60) mine is a 4600 so it doesn't have any air flowing past the harddrive. Could this heat shorten the life of my drive? if so is there any good way of cooling it? I can't get a new case because of my dell motherboard.
54-60 degrees Celcius WILL shorten the life of your drive. typically 40ish is considered to be safe but certainely not optimal. right now, my harddrive is 32C whic is considered safe.
I moved the harddrive a bit father inside the case and put a spare 120 MM case fan right in front of it blowing on it twards the back of the case and it's running around 45-48 now. but after a while it creeps up to 50. I think some of it might be my GPU fan, the dell processor/exuast fan blows air out the back to cool it so that's the only air flow, but the gpu fan just spits alot of air in both directions messing up the air flow quite a bit.
Just place a 80MM fan in front of your HDD someway. What kinda board is yours? If its ATX, you should be able to put it into an other case. My 3 160GB Sata's are running 24C (with a ambient of 15C ) and 2 80MM on low in front of them.
