G40 hard disk overheating

[hoffman]

I have a G40 (2384-33U) with a Hitachi DK23EA-40B hard drive. In the
last couple of days, my SMART monitoring software, HDDLife, has warned
me that the hard drive is overheating (over 45 degrees C). The hard
drive sensor starts at about 31 degrees C on the first reading, and
gradually increases to about 55 degrees C when the system fan turns on,
which cools it down just a little.

Hitachi specifies 55 degrees C as the maximum working temperature, and I haven't seen it go above 56 degrees C. The ACPI temperature reported by SpeedFan is about 55 degrees C. Hmonitor reports a CPU temperature of 42 degrees C.

Salient Facts

1. I upgraded to BIOS v1.18 and the Battery Maximiser with Fan Control
v1.38 the day before I started experiencing problems.

2. The ambient temperature in my uncooled room is probably around 25-30 degrees C. It has been much warmer (35) without any overheating problems in the past.

3. I've had some minor bad sector problems with this hard disk before.

4. The rubber foot underneath the hard drive has fallen off and I
haven't replaced it yet.

5. I notice that the CD-RW drive seems to be really too, but removing it
doesn't seem to help. The RAM area seems to be warm too, although
it's right next to the HD.

What should I do?

I see several options:

A. The easiest thing to do would be to get a new 2.5" hard drive
replacement. I've been considering the Samsung MP0804H. But if the
problem is actually somewhere else, getting a new hard drive will be an
expensive way to find that out, and then the high temperatures will
damage my new hard drive as well.

B. Buy new 3.5" hard drive and uSB enclosure for backup. Probably the
best choice if the problem is somewhere else in my system, as the
external drive will be safely removed for it. But if the internal hard
drive is about to fail or is going to cause other components to fail I
really want to replace it.

C. Buy a cooler pad for the notebook to cool it down somewhat.

What do you think I should do? It would be nice if I could just get the fan to stay on more.

I have also asked this question on the Thinkpads mailing list.

[hoffman]

I have investigated this problem further by putting the hard drive in an external enclosure, and then booting from an Ubuntu Linux Live CD. There I was able to monitor the motherboard temperature, while reading the entire hard drive to stress test it. The hard drive stayed cool as a cucumber. The motherboard temperature kept fluctuating, though. You can see a graph of it here:

http://cus.cam.ac.uk/~mh391/2005/thinkpad/acpi.pdf

The temperature goes up until the fan turns on, when it goes back down to a decent level. Then the fan turns off and the process repeats. I suspect that the BIOS update may have increased the threshold for turning the fan on, either to increase efficiency or decrease volume. I wish I could just leave the fan on all the time, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that. But since the fan seems to be working fine when it is actually turned on, and it passes the PC Doctor diagnostics tests.

Since a new fan assembly is so expensive here in the UK (more than the equivalent of USD 100), and I think the chance of damage to the solid state components is slight at these temperatures, I think I will just start backing up my data daily rather than buying new parts. I hope it is just a BIOS issue and that eventually a new BIOS will fix this.

If you think I'm being a total idiot and I really must replace the fan or get external cooling or something, please don't be shy about letting me know.