Second internal hard drive

[johnnymk]

Assuming I have a second or even a third 1 GB hard drive, does it still generate heat if it's idle most of the time.?

[Markel]

I hope you meant 1 TB!

I think a lot depends on your power settings. If you have it set to spin down hard drives after xx idle minutes, then the heat won't be much of an issue. I'm not sure what percentage of heat is from spinning the drive vs. driving the heads, though.

[johnnymk]

Sorry, I meant 1 TB. I didn't know that an individual hard drive could be turned off. I thought the entire system could only be turned off after a selected time.

[Jeffbx]

Yeah, I don't think you can selectively power down drives - it's either all or none. So as long as the system is on & active, all of the drives will be spinning & generating heat.

[InfiniteNothing]

I think that feature is built into laptop hard drives mostly.

Yes, they all make lots of heat especially the large capacity drives for some reason unknown to me.

[Devhux]

There is always the hot-swap drive bays as well. They aren't necessarily cheap ($100 for a 5-in-3 model), but they are convenient. It won't do automatic shut off though if the drive is idle.

[MrGreg]

My new system, I've got 4 HDs in it. Two are configured for RAID 1 and don't get used that often. They power down automatically when not used. When I do try to access them, it takes a second for them to spin up. I'm pretty sure it's a feature of the actual HD (they are from WD), not the OS.

[attgig]

i use something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ake-_-11999152

[Jeffbx]

That will cool the drive itself, but it's still adding a lot of heat to the system overall.

[Markel]

If you have a SATA drive, you could also use an external dock, such as this. That way 1) there would be no heat inside the case, and 2) you could power off the drive when it isn't needed.

[Markel]

By the way, if you've got an empty SATA connection on your motherboard (and an unused slot opening on your backplane), you could use something such as this to connect an external SATA dock via eSATA.

[johnnymk]

By the way, if you've got an empty SATA connection on your motherboard (and an unused slot opening on your backplane), you could use something such as this to connect an external SATA dock via eSATA.

Thanks, it gets good reviews.



I do have an SATA dock. I will definitely try this.

[johnnymk]

After thinking about it, the dock is SATA to USB. Would there be any advantage to using the SATA thingy instead of USB ports?

[Markel]

Didn't realize the one I linked was only SATA. Some of them also support an eSATA connection to the PC, such as this one ($25 after rebate).

[Jeffbx]

After thinking about it, the dock is SATA to USB. Would there be any advantage to using the SATA thingy instead of USB ports?

Yes - transfer rates will be much better with SATA

[johnnymk]

Yes - transfer rates will be much better with SATA

SATA to USB to SATA....wouldn't the USB be the bottleneck?

[attgig]

SATA to USB to SATA....wouldn't the USB be the bottleneck?

there is no usb with the second link. Sata drive to eSata.

you need an esata port on your motherboard, or an add on esata card.

[Markel]

you need an esata port on your motherboard, or an add on esata card.

Or if you have an unused sata port on your motherboard, get an external adapter such as I linked above.