Hitachi 60G/7200RPM runs very cool

[darrenf]

I just coppied partitions from a Hitachi 30G/4200RPM drive to a 60G/7200RPM. The 30G was very warm after the copy (as I would expect) but I could hardly feel any heat at all from the 60G!! The drives were open to air and not touching another heat source.

I had to run the copy a second time, so I switched their positions in the host machine and it made no difference. The 60G was amazingly cool while the 30G was borderline hot.

I may get a chance this weekend to try a 40G/5400RPM and 80G/5400RPM. I'll report back with the results.

-darren

[ryan]

keep in mind that the 7200RPM 60gig was only running at the 4200RPM 30gig's speed.

[darrenf]

Why is that? I thought it can only read/write at its rated speed.

-darren

[ryan]

i mean on average. the 60gig got "resting time" for instance.

[darrenf]

Hmmm - I doubt it. I don't have any power management turned on -- I was using a desktop PC.

-darren

[darrenf]

ryan, I think I see what you are getting at. Because the data is transferred at the speed of the slowest drive, the faster drive is only reading/writing at that speed. That is correct, but I'm not sure if that should impact the heat generated. I would expect most heat to be generated by the platter rotation which is a constant when reading or writing.

If the 60GB has different physical sector geometry and fits more sectors per track, the head would not move as often. Perhaps that could explain some of it?

Can anyone else help us out on where the heat comes from in a HDD? Rotation, head movement, reading/writing?

-darren

[akerman]

you'll find that the 60gig (in most cases) will stay cool, as long as you do light stuff.. like surfing the web, typing etc... but once you stress it, it will get warm.

so it must depend on something other than the platter rotation..