Cooling solution for external 2.5" hard disk?

[danlimcy]

I have a Thinkpad A31p and I am using it basically in a desktop replacement role. I have it turned on throughout the entire day and sometimes also over the night.

Recently I have upgraded the hard disk of my Thinkpad A31p and now I am using the old hard disk in an external 2.5" casing as a second hard disk.

After some use, I found that the external hard disk gets hot very quickly. As I intend to also have it turned on always, I am concern that the prolong heat may be bad for the disk's life span.

I did some Internet web search and noticed that there are external 3.5" casings with internal fans. Using such casings seems to be an option, but the disadvantage is they have to be powered by a separate power adapter.

I wonder if any one has experience with any other cooling solutions? Thanks.

[storage_man]

Cooling is a real problem. Most cases that don't have fans, should only be used intermittently. My first 3.5" didn't have a fan and the salesman said there would be no problems. Well there is a 160gb that I put in there, and I use it only for VIDEO storage. But During developement of a DVD based video, it can easily take 10 hours. Well after about 1 hour, the case was so hot I had a hard time just touching it. I modified the case and added an external fan. Now I can run it day or night and it is cool as a cucumber (Midwest Term). My next 3.5" obviously has a fan (Actually it has dual fans) again it stays really cool. I also have a couple of 2.5" enclosures - They are aluminum, with each have a 20gb drive. They get hot. I use them for temporay video storage (when I'm on the road) and at home for incremental backups. So they are not powered on for any length of time. If you plan on runing your external for any length of time, get an enclosure with at least one fan.

Storage_man

PS: I have yet to have a failure with either the fan based or non fanned enclosures.