Hard drive cooling. Am I overly worried?

[pgrnpacer]

New poster and FreeNAS (soon-to-be) rookie.

I have been doing a ton of research about building a FreeNAS system and I am prepared to start purchasing some hardware. The first order of business for me is a tower chassis but I am concerned about hard drive temperatures. I don't have a server rack and don't plan on having anything larger than 6 drives so I plan on sticking with a tower.

Background: I am going to be building a NAS with (6) 4TB WD Red hard drives that will be used as a Plex server for my media library, pictures and videos of my kids/family, and possibly to hold business documents if I end up starting my own pension administration business in a couple years.

Currently I have a 4TB 7200 RPM Seagate hard drive in one of my computers that would spike to between 45-51 degrees Celsius under load which really scared me. I ended up buying a spring loaded heatsink/fan combo that I could put on the hard drive and it fits perfectly inside a 5.25" drive bay and now the hard drive hits 30-32 degrees Celsius under the heaviest load which is great. The downside is that the little fans on the front of that cooler are pretty loud and noisy and I was hoping to avoid that with the NAS that I end up building. I have read that the 180mm fans on the Silverstone Raven RV04 cases are quiet and push a lot of air but they aren't situated in front of the 5.25" drive bays.

Question 1.....Am I overly worried about the drive temperatures?

Question 2....Are 30-32 degrees Celsius drive temperatures possible without hard drive heatsinks and fans? I would imagine that the temperatures of an itty bitty crammed 5 hard drive cage would be frightening without heat sinks....

Question 3....Anyone know how difficult it would be to fabricate a 5.25" drive cage in front of the huge fans in that RV04 case? I imagine I would end up riveting the sides of the cage to the case somehow...

I have been searching the web for case modifications like this but nobody seems to bother dealing with hard drive heat all that much. It is all about the cpu and graphics card in everything I find....and I won't even have a graphics card.

Thanks in advance for any input or direction anyone can provide.

 

[SweetAndLow]

You should try to keep your HDD temps under 40c. This shouldn't require anything fancy and most modern cases with stock fans can accomplish this. You should start by telling us your hardware spec and case. 7200rpm HDD aren't recommended because they do run hot but nothing you can't fix with a higher rpm fan with more static pressure.

 

[marbus90]

Fractal Node 304
Fractal Arc Mini
Fractal Define Mini
^ all nice cases for 6 HDDs with ITX to mATX form factors, the stock fans are fine. with the Minis you may have to put the 2nd 120mm fan in front as well, but you wouldn't need more cooling.

 

[enemy85]

With the Node 304 and 5 x 3TB WD Reds installed in it, I can assure you the drives temperatures are ok. Just hitting 39-40°C during really hot summer days while scrubbing, but that's the worst temperature ever reached

 

[nick779]

With my node 804, 4 1tb reds and 2 1tb blues dont go over 33-35c during a scrub. They idle in the 25-27c range Only fans on that side are 2 900rpm gentle typhoons, one intake, one exhaust.

 

[cyberjock]

I think 45C+ is definitely not a place you should be "okay" with. Definitely lower. If you were hitting 42-43C at the hottest part of the summer while doing a scrub I'd say not to worry about it. But to get up to 51C under load, hell no!

 

[bhcelt]

The best factual information I have found relating to temperature and hard drive failure is this article from Backblaze:
Hard Drive Temperature – Does It Matter?

Their conclusion was that there is little correlation "As long as you run drives well within their allowed range of operating temperatures". Seagate says "With our newer model drives the maximum temperature is now at 60 degrees Celsius. The operating temperature range for most Seagate hard drives is 5 to 50 degrees Celsius." Ironically Backblaze also said, "The one exception is the Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB drives, which fail slightly more when they run warmer." Looking at their data, warmer for them maxed at 28C for those failed Seagates. I agree with the other responses - keep those drives 40C and preferably under.

I've never worked with your case so I'm sorry I don't have any specific fan recommendation. AnandTech's review of the Raven RV04 did say, "SilverStone is using just two 180mm intake fans to cool your entire system in the RV04, and the fans are evenly split into zones. The top fan blows directly on the expansion slots, while the bottom fan blows through the hard drive cage and the CPU cooler. Spacing of hard drive mounts allows a decent amount of air from SilverStone's bottom Air Penetrator fan to go through and cool the processor, and the top fan's airflow is almost totally unobstructed." I'd give a careful read of the SilentPCReview look at the case, they point out some of it's issues rather well.

If you are not wedded to using that case you might want to look at something like a Fractal ARC or Define R5, the latter is a good design in particular for a combination of good cooling design in a quiet case. Eight 3.5 bays with two spots for 140mm fans blowing right on them.

 

[GrumpyBear]

I'm running a mix of 4 3TB Western Digital Red and 4 3TB Seagate NAS disks in the Fractal R4 case ( the older version of the R5) and under heavy load with 4 120 mm fans running at their slowest speed the disks stay under 40c and it is very quiet.

The NAS disks consume less power than the desktop Seagate drives and run a lot cooler.

 

[pgrnpacer]

Thanks for the responses guys!

So it seems that I may have assumed that cooling a hard drive to the lowest temperature possible is desireable but you guys are telling me that keeping the hard drives under 40 degrees Celsius is the true goal and that cooling them any further doesn't really impact disk longevity and is overkill. Is that a fair assessment?

 

[enemy85]

the best is between 25-35°C. The maximum raccomended is around 40 degrees and a too low temperature is not raccomended either.

 

[pgrnpacer]

The best factual information I have found relating to temperature and hard drive failure is this article from Backblaze:
Hard Drive Temperature – Does It Matter?

Wow that is an interesting article bhcelt! Thank you for linking that! That definitely helps confirm what everyone is telling me. Looks like I am, in fact, overly worried. I will take a look at those cases you talked about. Not sure if I want to go full tower or something small with a small ATX form factor. I don't think I will ever need anything more than one VDEV with the (6) 4TB drives....but I suppose you never know and this machine will end up being tucked away in a corner so it doesn't need to be overly pretty and small.

 

[cyberjock]

I don't put a whole lot of faith in BackBlaze. They've had plenty of "white papers" on their business decisions and provided evidence that was basically written off by the storage community as "fodder for the trash can". So I take what they say with a grain of salt.

Google says one thing, Backblaze says another. Guess which one I trust? Guess which one I've found to be pretty true for my server? ;)

 

[Bidule0hm]

The best factual information I have found relating to temperature and hard drive failure is this article from Backblaze:
Hard Drive Temperature – Does It Matter?

Their conclusion was that there is little correlation "As long as you run drives well within their allowed range of operating temperatures". Seagate says "With our newer model drives the maximum temperature is now at 60 degrees Celsius. The operating temperature range for most Seagate hard drives is 5 to 50 degrees Celsius." Ironically Backblaze also said, "The one exception is the Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB drives, which fail slightly more when they run warmer." Looking at their data, warmer for them maxed at 28C for those failed Seagates. I agree with the other responses - keep those drives 40C and preferably under.

I've never worked with your case so I'm sorry I don't have any specific fan recommendation. AnandTech's review of the Raven RV04 did say, "SilverStone is using just two 180mm intake fans to cool your entire system in the RV04, and the fans are evenly split into zones. The top fan blows directly on the expansion slots, while the bottom fan blows through the hard drive cage and the CPU cooler. Spacing of hard drive mounts allows a decent amount of air from SilverStone's bottom Air Penetrator fan to go through and cool the processor, and the top fan's airflow is almost totally unobstructed." I'd give a careful read of the SilentPCReview look at the case, they point out some of it's issues rather well.

If you are not wedded to using that case you might want to look at something like a Fractal ARC or Define R5, the latter is a good design in particular for a combination of good cooling design in a quiet case. Eight 3.5 bays with two spots for 140mm fans blowing right on them.

Well, the only real study on the drive temp is the paper from Google. Backblaze just post stats that are no meaningful because drives aren't mounted properly to avoid vibrations. About the temp you can see all theirs drives are from 20 to 30 C, it's not a proper range to extract meaningful data from, and even if it was theirs drives are used in conditions that aren't comparable to "normal" conditions so failure rates wouldn't be the same.

From the google paper we can see the recommended temp is 35 C with a min at 30 C and a max at 40 C.

 

[GrumpyBear]

... I will take a look at those cases you talked about. Not sure if I want to go full tower or something small with a small ATX form factor. I don't think I will ever need anything more than one VDEV with the (6) 4TB drives....but I suppose you never know and this machine will end up being tucked away in a corner so it doesn't need to be overly pretty and small.

As marbus90 states Take a look at the Fractal Design Define Mini or ARC Mini both of which are cases with large volumes which help reduce constrictions to the airflow path and are popular here or the Node 304 which only supports mini ITX boards.
In essence any mid tower with 6 internal HDD bays will work but as you have discovered paying attention to the layout for cooling is a very good idea.
Like Cyberjock and others I don't put a lot of faith into the Backblaze report and treat the Google one with some caution as it is nearly 10 years old. At work however, whenever we have lost A/C in a Data Center for a protracted period (say over a weekend) invariable within a couple of weeks we end up having to replace all or the vast majority of the hard disks in the systems and after going through this twice in the last 10 years it is now included in our Disaster Recovery Plan as a "must" if the A/C is gone for more than 8 hours without remediation.

 

[marbus90]

iirc the newer backblaze pods are vibration dampening. at least that's an option for the 45drive pod chassis.

 

[bhcelt]

Like Cyberjock and others I don't put a lot of faith into the Backblaze report and treat the Google one with some caution as it is nearly 10 years old.

Yea, unfortunately these are the the best out there that I know of, and at least Backblaze does include data on contemporary drives. Who knows if today's 4TB and 6TB drives are going to behave within past expectations till we see some large scale data?
Backblaze overall failure reports by brand do point some interesting results as well..

 

[Ericloewe]

Besides Backblaze's questionable hardware choices, what really bugs me is their analysis.

They really just aggregate data in ways that make no sense. I don't care about the failure rate of all their Seagate 2TB drives if they have everything between "brand-new" and "older than the company". A MTTF would be much better, if still rather vague.

 

[husky1055]

I have never had any HD running above 40 C before either in desktops or NAS in either 5600 or 7200 rpm. But I do in Freenas with the newer Toshiba and Seagate 3 TB 7200 rpm. They are about 41-44 C depending on load and activity. I know that 40 C or lower would be better but I have no way of adding extra cooling to the case because of size limitation not to mention lack of header on the MB. So my question is should I be worried so much that replacement of drives to lower rpm be a serious consideration?

 

[Stux]

I have never had any HD running above 40 C before either in desktops or NAS in either 5600 or 7200 rpm. But I do in Freenas with the newer Toshiba and Seagate 3 TB 7200 rpm. They are about 41-44 C depending on load and activity. I know that 40 C or lower would be better but I have no way of adding extra cooling to the case because of size limitation not to mention lack of header on the MB. So my question is should I be worried so much that replacement of drives to lower rpm be a serious consideration?

No point replacing the drives until they fail.

 

[GrumpyBear]

I have never had any HD running above 40 C before either in desktops or NAS in either 5600 or 7200 rpm. But I do in Freenas with the newer Toshiba and Seagate 3 TB 7200 rpm. They are about 41-44 C depending on load and activity. I know that 40 C or lower would be better but I have no way of adding extra cooling to the case because of size limitation not to mention lack of header on the MB. So my question is should I be worried so much that replacement of drives to lower rpm be a serious consideration?

Fans can be replaced to improve airflow and fan splitters can be used to run multiple fans off a single header. 7200rpm disks do tend to run hotter.

If you can provide a list of your hardware we may be able to make better suggestions how to get the temperatures down a bit. The biggest expense in a NAS build is typically the drives and one of the least expensive the case so replacing the case with a larger one or one with better airflow potential might be the way to go.

You mention 41 to 44c depending on the load. I'd be concerned about 41c running under no load but a single drive hitting 44 under sustained load when the rest are a few degrees cooler might not be too bad.

A good fan with lots of static pressure can vastly improve the situation in cases where there is limited airflow due to drives crammed together and simple things like bundling cables or re-routing them might also help.