two hard drives - advisable to get an extra cooling fan ?

jasonwatkins

basically i've got a 400gb hard drive in my machine at the moment which works fine.

what I want to do is take the 160gb hard drive out of my Sky + HD box and add that as well to use as my 'system' drive, with my windows installation, apps e.t.c...

then I want to use the 400gb drive as a media drive to contain all my music and also a backup of my media player - i've got about 300gb's worth of stuff on that.

just wondering if it's worth installing an extra cooling fan ?

i don't plan on thrashing either drive, and I doubt i'll be doing anything like setting up a wireless streaming solution to watch the stuff on my TV any time soon, so if it's not massively necessary then I won't get one.

The_Grandmaster

Do you have a desktop with the box (what is it called...) where the harddrives are kept? If you have a free space I think you can just put it in. Or just put the harddrive in a caddy and use it as an external harddrive - which I assume would not require a fan. I could be wrong though... (we shall wait and see what others says)

aliEnRIK

I wouldnt bother personally unless the machines running very hot as it is

jasonwatkins

it's just a regular desktop PC - the plan is to open it up and slide the drive into a spare tray.

this all may well come crashing down if i don't have a spare IDE cable

aliEnRIK wrote: »

I wouldnt bother personally unless the machines running very hot as it is

it doesn't really run hot at all, so that sounds good to me. thanks.

weegie.geek

Depends how much the drives heat up and how much space will be between them.

Or whether they're 5400rpm or 7200rpm, what model they are... Some of the newer drives run incredibly cool in comparison to older drives.

Or how airflow is inside the case right now.

Download hdtune and monitor the temperatures of your drives.

jasonwatkins

just had a look at hdtune and it says the temperature is currently between 36 and 37 degrees.

although it says that on the "Ultra DMA CRC Error count" that I have communication errors that may be caused by a damaged cable ???

JasX

Should be fine without extra fans but i'd try and not put it next to something that generates heat if you can avoid it -ie if you can leave a gap between HDDs or put it next to something that generates less heat (eg optical drive if its not in constant use) that'd be better but not essential.

Is it worth butchering a sky HD box for a 160GB drive.... i guess if the box is no use to you and can;t be readily sold *shrug*

jasonwatkins

JasX wrote: »

Is it worth butchering a sky HD box for a 160GB drive.... i guess if the box is no use to you and can;t be readily sold *shrug*

Well I actually rejoined Virgin on Saturday and had the new Samsung box installed, and my Sky contract is officially ending in a fortnight.

So there's no real need for the box as it stands.

The average price they're going for on ebay for the standard model is about £30-£40 quid, but if I copy all the stuff off my media player I could get £40 quid for that in itself.

And i've just opened the box up to find that the hard drive is actually 320gb - not 160gb

I should have realised that half would have been partitioned off for Anytime ...

I might be cheeky and put the box on ebay and advertise it for sale with no hard drive though

weegie.geek

jasonwatkins wrote: »

just had a look at hdtune and it says the temperature is currently between 36 and 37 degrees.

although it says that on the "Ultra DMA CRC Error count" that I have communication errors that may be caused by a damaged cable ???

Temps are fine. the SMART error could be the cable, but could be hardware on its way out.

jasonwatkins

weegie.geek wrote: »

could be hardware on its way out.

God, don't say that

jimbms

It never does any harm to have more cooling.