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#1 2008-06-08 11:07:41

Laertes
Member
From: Munich
Registered: 2007-04-08
Posts: 66

HD temperatures

Hi,

I would like to know what temperature is considered normal for a hard disk. In my laptop with a Samsung HM121HC 120GB IDE drive, the temperatures are these:

- 43-44C, with hdparm -B 128 and a lot of cliks
- 48-49C, with hdparm -B 254 and no clicks

The room temperature is usually 21-24C. The highest temperature I've ever seen in this HD was 52C with the lid closed. According to the specs, the maximun working temperature is 55C.

In my desktop computer, the HD temperature never gets higher than 35C.

Can you please post your values?

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#2 2008-06-08 13:21:06

Morra
Member
Registered: 2008-05-16
Posts: 39

Re: HD temperatures

33 and 35 ℃.
This is a copy paste from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive:

A common misconception is that a colder hard drive will last longer than a hotter hard drive. The Google study showed the reverse -- "lower temperatures are associated with higher failure rates". Hard drives with S.M.A.R.T.-reported average temperatures below 27 C had failure rates worse than hard drives with the highest reported average temperature of 50 C, failure rates at least twice as high as the optimum S.M.A.R.T.-reported temperature range of 36 C to 47 C.

So according to this you don't need to panic.

There has been a lot of discussion about the clicking sound of hard drives in the forum. I think you should check out this thread: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=39258. What does "smartctl" say about your Load_Cycle_Count?

Last edited by Morra (2008-06-08 13:21:57)

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#3 2008-06-08 17:02:56

Laertes
Member
From: Munich
Registered: 2007-04-08
Posts: 66

Re: HD temperatures

Thanks Morra. Because of the thread you mention I started paying attention to these things. I also wrote in that thread. If I use -B 254 the temperature rises, which seems not very dangerous, and the hard drive freezes sometimes, specially when writing big files. If I use the B 128, which is the default value for my HD, the clicks are heard every few seconds and the Load_Cycle_Count grows accordingly. Now the number is 270748, which I think is quite high for a drive only 7 months old. Also, it seems that no freezings occur whith this setting.

smartctl -A /dev/hda
smartctl version 5.37 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   100   100   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       1
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0007   252   252   025    Pre-fail  Always       -       2125
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       433
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   099   099   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       11
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000e   252   252   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0024   252   252   015    Old_age   Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       2670
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   252   252   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       228
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       15177
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       54
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   100   082   000    Old_age   Always       -       46 (Lifetime Min/Max 12/52)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       5686
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   252   252   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0036   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x000a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       12
201 Soft_Read_Error_Rate    0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
223 Load_Retry_Count        0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       2802
225 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   074   074   000    Old_age   Always       -       270748

Last edited by Laertes (2008-06-08 17:03:31)

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#4 2008-06-08 18:19:42

Morra
Member
Registered: 2008-05-16
Posts: 39

Re: HD temperatures

Oh, I didn't notice that you had posted to that thread already.

I don't have a laptop myself so I don't have any good advice to give you. The only thing that crosses my mind is to try to minimize the disk acitivity. Disable access time from fstab and try PowerTOP http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/ to track down the resource hogs.

Good luck with the problem solving.

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#5 2008-06-09 20:44:18

Laertes
Member
From: Munich
Registered: 2007-04-08
Posts: 66

Re: HD temperatures

Well, I am almost sure that the freezings are caused by the hdparm -B 254 command. I've been doing some tests and no freezings at all with the -B 128 option. The only problem is the high grow rate of Load_Cycle_Count.

My fstab already has acces times disabled:

cat /etc/fstab 
# 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>        <dir>         <type>    <options>                                      <dump> <pass>
none                   /dev/pts      devpts    defaults                                       0      0
none                   /dev/shm      tmpfs     defaults                                       0      0
/dev/hda1              /             ext3      defaults,noatime,nodiratime,async              0      1
/dev/hda2              swap          swap      defaults                                       0      0
/dev/hda3              /home         ext3      defaults,noatime,nodiratime,async              0      2

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