Good idea... Nasty results.
Published: 2006-07-17
Category: Tech
Tags:
Language: [English]
page views: 293

Yet another example of how in theory good ideas.. but badly executed can have rather nasty consecuences.



At work, we were notecing that those nice +250G sata disks were running just a little too hot. So we went looking for a solution.



One thing on the market here are little ventilators that your mount ontop of the disk it self. The case of the mouting is made of metal, increasing the raditating surfice and the two ventilators blow air on the disks directly keeping them cool. The brand here right now is "CiberCooler".







After some experimenting we observed that it really worked, bringing disk temperatures down from "too hot to touch" to a plesant "luke warm". Great efect.



Nice idea.. right? Why didn't they think of this before? Well, the idea might be okay, but this particular implementation left something to be desired.




A few days ago, the DVR box was no longer responding. It was still pinging but it wouldn't show the DVR webpages or allow ssh access. This linux box had 2 disks of 250G. Looking at the console, it had some disk write errors, and this was clearly why it was not responding. 



We decided to open her up (a racked machine) and taking out the drive part, this is what we saw:



 



What the BEEP is the black thing laying on the bottom disk? further investigating made it clear that it wasn't just laying on the disk.. it had actually melted into plastic upper layer of the bottom disk.



After a bit more of unskrewing it was clear what had happened:



 



Somehow one of the two ventilators had overheated and melted its way down onto the lower harddisk. The rim of the ventilator was carbonized and the spokes that hold the motor in place were completely missing!



 



The heat would have been quite high to achive this kind of effect. The upper disk was completely smoked on the side where the ventilator had been hanging from it.



Maybe the most amazing part of it was, was that the disk that had the that the ventilator core melted into it never worked again. But the smoked harddisk had no problem and works perfectly afterwards..



The correct solution to keeping your disks cool is getting a quality case, with quality ventilators that keep airflow over the disks. not mucking about with silly inventions.