big drives run quite hot ?

I just upgrade my 40gig Western Digital drive to a 180gig Western
Digital drive, and I am quite sure that it runs, physically speaking,
at least twice as "hot" as the 40gig drive.

It's *not* so hot that I could fry an egg on it, and in fact, I can
touch it and leave my finger on it for 5 seconds, but after 5 seconds,
I really feel, "geez, that's hot".

The 40gig was just "quite warm".

Actually, I noticed the 120gig WD drive can get quite hot too. But that
makes me feel better, because it means there's nothing especially wrong
with the 180gig drive.

But still, I worry about "wear" issues. Usually I run my PC 24 hours a
day, when I am here, and not on vacation. But at the very least I am going
to set up XP to turn off the disks after 20 minutes.

Any comments on this ? What happens when we get to 400gig drives ? Will
I be able to fry an egg on them then ? I thought the platters would
just hold more data, so I can't understand why they are also hotter.

Thanks for any info.

Danzig Glenn wrote in message news:05d7ed93047ae7d8ea5e4c7343c352f2.74207@mygate .mailgate.org...

There has to be more electrical energy required to
keep a 3 platter stack rotating than a single platter.

But there isnt much in it with the idle power numbers at
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/curre...?Model=WD400ab
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/curre...Model=WD1800JB

Ohh...so the 180gb use less power than the 40gb...interesting

there's comparative list than power
required by hd of different productors?

I havent noticed one.

(i need difference betwen IDE HD: saegate and western
digital, i want to find one with a good relationship gb/w,
for choose the hd for a always on (24/7)machine...

The Samsungs have much better GB/W numbers.
http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/index.htm