External Firewire/USB Enclosures -insufficient cooling? Maxtor 160gig dead.

I'm interested in hearing from people who have external hard
drive enclosures. Are you having any heat related problems
such as drives getting corrupt after prolonged usage or outright
dying? Anyone out there having no problems?

My enclosure is an ADS dual link (firewire/USB) in which I
installed a Maxtor 160 gig. The enclosure has a tiny fan located
near the power supply.

Peering into the guts of the enclosure, I can see an electronic
component from the power supply circuit board is placed squarely
in front of the fan, thus obstructing some of the flow from the
hard drive. I think this component is a bridge rectifier, but
it's hard to see since there's a steel cage all around the power
supply. Is the fan perhaps only good enough to cool the enclosure's
power supply but doing very little for the hard drive itself?

My maxtor drive worked fine until i placed it in the enclosure.
Afterwards, it started corrupting data and eventually it developed
a horrible mechanical rattle that would go away only if I turned
off the drive for an hour to cool. Of course, once I heard the
rattle I knew the drive could no longer be trusted, but I wanted
to see if the issue was heat related.

I suspect the enclosure is to blame -it's very cramped and you can
feel how warm it gets in operation. When you take off the external
plastic shell and feel the metal shell underneath, you realize just
how hot the enclosure gets. I at first thought the fan had died,
but it hadn't. Also, and I believe this is critical, there is very
little space between the bottom of the drive and where it mounts into
the enclosure. At least when the drive was mounted internally in
my computer case I was able to leave a lot of space between drive bays.
This area must heat up horribly in the drive enclosure, and it's right
where the drive electronics and motor spindle are located. I figure
the data corruption probably occurred from the drive electronics
getting hot.

Perhaps maxtor drives run too hot to put in these enclosures without
more cooling? Should I switch to western digital? It's hard to tell
for me with only this one drive failing, which is why I'd like to
hear from others out there.

I recently bought a Coolmax CD-510B Combo enclosure (black, aluminum,
USB/Firewire) from www.newegg.com and a Western Digital 160GB HD from Office
Max (HD=$80 after rebates).

I read some comments from users in the comments section on Newegg and it
seems that aluminum enclosures with a fan are best to use with hard drives,
due to the heating problem. There are plastic and aluminum enclosures, and
they range from 2.5" to 3.5" to 5.25", some with and some without fans.

It seemed that the general feeling was aluminum with a fan (for hard drives)
was the way to go to prevent early HD demise.

"druid3" wrote in message
...
I'm interested in hearing from people who have external hard
drive enclosures. Are you having any heat related problems
such as drives getting corrupt after prolonged usage or outright
dying? Anyone out there having no problems?

My enclosure is an ADS dual link (firewire/USB) in which I
installed a Maxtor 160 gig. The enclosure has a tiny fan located
near the power supply.

Peering into the guts of the enclosure, I can see an electronic
component from the power supply circuit board is placed squarely
in front of the fan, thus obstructing some of the flow from the
hard drive. I think this component is a bridge rectifier, but
it's hard to see since there's a steel cage all around the power
supply. Is the fan perhaps only good enough to cool the enclosure's
power supply but doing very little for the hard drive itself?

My maxtor drive worked fine until i placed it in the enclosure.
Afterwards, it started corrupting data and eventually it developed
a horrible mechanical rattle that would go away only if I turned
off the drive for an hour to cool. Of course, once I heard the
rattle I knew the drive could no longer be trusted, but I wanted
to see if the issue was heat related.

I suspect the enclosure is to blame -it's very cramped and you can
feel how warm it gets in operation. When you take off the external
plastic shell and feel the metal shell underneath, you realize just
how hot the enclosure gets. I at first thought the fan had died,
but it hadn't. Also, and I believe this is critical, there is very
little space between the bottom of the drive and where it mounts into
the enclosure. At least when the drive was mounted internally in
my computer case I was able to leave a lot of space between drive bays.
This area must heat up horribly in the drive enclosure, and it's right
where the drive electronics and motor spindle are located. I figure
the data corruption probably occurred from the drive electronics
getting hot.

Perhaps maxtor drives run too hot to put in these enclosures without
more cooling? Should I switch to western digital? It's hard to tell
for me with only this one drive failing, which is why I'd like to
hear from others out there.

yes. many, if not most, of the cheapo enclosures are very poorly designed...
especially those little gray plastic ones.. horrible. The ADS units, while
larger, do have poor ventilation even with the fan. But I have not had a
drive die in one of them yet.
"druid3" wrote in message
...
I'm interested in hearing from people who have external hard
drive enclosures. Are you having any heat related problems
such as drives getting corrupt after prolonged usage or outright
dying? Anyone out there having no problems?

My enclosure is an ADS dual link (firewire/USB) in which I
installed a Maxtor 160 gig. The enclosure has a tiny fan located
near the power supply.

Peering into the guts of the enclosure, I can see an electronic
component from the power supply circuit board is placed squarely
in front of the fan, thus obstructing some of the flow from the
hard drive. I think this component is a bridge rectifier, but
it's hard to see since there's a steel cage all around the power
supply. Is the fan perhaps only good enough to cool the enclosure's
power supply but doing very little for the hard drive itself?

My maxtor drive worked fine until i placed it in the enclosure.
Afterwards, it started corrupting data and eventually it developed
a horrible mechanical rattle that would go away only if I turned
off the drive for an hour to cool. Of course, once I heard the
rattle I knew the drive could no longer be trusted, but I wanted
to see if the issue was heat related.

I suspect the enclosure is to blame -it's very cramped and you can
feel how warm it gets in operation. When you take off the external
plastic shell and feel the metal shell underneath, you realize just
how hot the enclosure gets. I at first thought the fan had died,
but it hadn't. Also, and I believe this is critical, there is very
little space between the bottom of the drive and where it mounts into
the enclosure. At least when the drive was mounted internally in
my computer case I was able to leave a lot of space between drive bays.
This area must heat up horribly in the drive enclosure, and it's right
where the drive electronics and motor spindle are located. I figure
the data corruption probably occurred from the drive electronics
getting hot.

Perhaps maxtor drives run too hot to put in these enclosures without
more cooling? Should I switch to western digital? It's hard to tell
for me with only this one drive failing, which is why I'd like to
hear from others out there.

druid3 wrote:

I'm interested in hearing from people who have external hard
drive enclosures. Are you having any heat related problems
such as drives getting corrupt after prolonged usage or outright
dying? Anyone out there having no problems?


I have a Coolmax CD309 combo enclosure, and I think it's pretty poorly
designed. The case body is aluminum, but the mounting tray is plastic.
Because of this, there is absolutely no conduction to take heat away
from the drive.

I ended up squeezing in the sides of the case so that it's at least
touching the top of the drive.

I still wouldn't trust it for continuous use, though. I juse use it
for backups. (No longer than 20 mins at a time)



-WD

No way heat caused your drive to die. If you look at the external OneTouch
USB drives that Maxtor sells themselves, none of them have fans, and they
use DM9 7200rpm drives. Sure it's an oven inside, but they warranty the
drives for 3 years, so it must be OK.

"druid3" wrote in message
...
I'm interested in hearing from people who have external hard
drive enclosures. Are you having any heat related problems
such as drives getting corrupt after prolonged usage or outright
dying? Anyone out there having no problems?

My enclosure is an ADS dual link (firewire/USB) in which I
installed a Maxtor 160 gig. The enclosure has a tiny fan located
near the power supply.

Peering into the guts of the enclosure, I can see an electronic
component from the power supply circuit board is placed squarely
in front of the fan, thus obstructing some of the flow from the
hard drive. I think this component is a bridge rectifier, but
it's hard to see since there's a steel cage all around the power
supply. Is the fan perhaps only good enough to cool the enclosure's
power supply but doing very little for the hard drive itself?

My maxtor drive worked fine until i placed it in the enclosure.
Afterwards, it started corrupting data and eventually it developed
a horrible mechanical rattle that would go away only if I turned
off the drive for an hour to cool. Of course, once I heard the
rattle I knew the drive could no longer be trusted, but I wanted
to see if the issue was heat related.

I suspect the enclosure is to blame -it's very cramped and you can
feel how warm it gets in operation. When you take off the external
plastic shell and feel the metal shell underneath, you realize just
how hot the enclosure gets. I at first thought the fan had died,
but it hadn't. Also, and I believe this is critical, there is very
little space between the bottom of the drive and where it mounts into
the enclosure. At least when the drive was mounted internally in
my computer case I was able to leave a lot of space between drive bays.
This area must heat up horribly in the drive enclosure, and it's right
where the drive electronics and motor spindle are located. I figure
the data corruption probably occurred from the drive electronics
getting hot.

Perhaps maxtor drives run too hot to put in these enclosures without
more cooling? Should I switch to western digital? It's hard to tell
for me with only this one drive failing, which is why I'd like to
hear from others out there.

"Joe Hayes" wrote ...
No way heat caused your drive to die. If you look at the
external OneTouch USB drives that Maxtor sells themselves,
none of them have fans, and they use DM9 7200rpm drives.
Sure it's an oven inside, but they warranty the drives for 3
years, so it must be OK.

LOL! :-))

Joe Hayes wrote in message
news:8%XJb.43632$a44.38328@okepread04...

No way heat caused your drive to die.

Wrong.

If you look at the external OneTouch USB drives that
Maxtor sells themselves, none of them have fans, and
they use DM9 7200rpm drives. Sure it's an oven inside,

Just another example of lousy design.

but they warranty the drives for 3 years, so it must be OK.

Pathetic, really.


"druid3" wrote in message
...
I'm interested in hearing from people who have external hard
drive enclosures. Are you having any heat related problems
such as drives getting corrupt after prolonged usage or outright
dying? Anyone out there having no problems?

My enclosure is an ADS dual link (firewire/USB) in which I
installed a Maxtor 160 gig. The enclosure has a tiny fan located
near the power supply.

Peering into the guts of the enclosure, I can see an electronic
component from the power supply circuit board is placed squarely
in front of the fan, thus obstructing some of the flow from the
hard drive. I think this component is a bridge rectifier, but
it's hard to see since there's a steel cage all around the power
supply. Is the fan perhaps only good enough to cool the enclosure's
power supply but doing very little for the hard drive itself?

My maxtor drive worked fine until i placed it in the enclosure.
Afterwards, it started corrupting data and eventually it developed
a horrible mechanical rattle that would go away only if I turned
off the drive for an hour to cool. Of course, once I heard the
rattle I knew the drive could no longer be trusted, but I wanted
to see if the issue was heat related.

I suspect the enclosure is to blame -it's very cramped and you can
feel how warm it gets in operation. When you take off the external
plastic shell and feel the metal shell underneath, you realize just
how hot the enclosure gets. I at first thought the fan had died,
but it hadn't. Also, and I believe this is critical, there is very
little space between the bottom of the drive and where it mounts into
the enclosure. At least when the drive was mounted internally in
my computer case I was able to leave a lot of space between drive bays.
This area must heat up horribly in the drive enclosure, and it's right
where the drive electronics and motor spindle are located. I figure
the data corruption probably occurred from the drive electronics
getting hot.

Perhaps maxtor drives run too hot to put in these enclosures without
more cooling? Should I switch to western digital? It's hard to tell
for me with only this one drive failing, which is why I'd like to
hear from others out there.

"Rod Speed" wrote in message ...

Joe Hayes wrote in message
news:8%XJb.43632$a44.38328@okepread04...

No way heat caused your drive to die.

Wrong.

If you look at the external OneTouch USB drives that
Maxtor sells themselves, none of them have fans, and
they use DM9 7200rpm drives. Sure it's an oven inside,

Just another example of lousy design.

but they warranty the drives for 3 years,

Like hell they do.
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/ser...rranty/faq.htm
The worst is actually 90 days.

so it must be OK.

Pathetic, really.


"druid3" wrote in message
...
I'm interested in hearing from people who have external hard
drive enclosures. Are you having any heat related problems
such as drives getting corrupt after prolonged usage or outright
dying? Anyone out there having no problems?

My enclosure is an ADS dual link (firewire/USB) in which I
installed a Maxtor 160 gig. The enclosure has a tiny fan located
near the power supply.

Peering into the guts of the enclosure, I can see an electronic
component from the power supply circuit board is placed squarely
in front of the fan, thus obstructing some of the flow from the
hard drive. I think this component is a bridge rectifier, but
it's hard to see since there's a steel cage all around the power
supply. Is the fan perhaps only good enough to cool the enclosure's
power supply but doing very little for the hard drive itself?

My maxtor drive worked fine until i placed it in the enclosure.
Afterwards, it started corrupting data and eventually it developed
a horrible mechanical rattle that would go away only if I turned
off the drive for an hour to cool. Of course, once I heard the
rattle I knew the drive could no longer be trusted, but I wanted
to see if the issue was heat related.

I suspect the enclosure is to blame -it's very cramped and you can
feel how warm it gets in operation. When you take off the external
plastic shell and feel the metal shell underneath, you realize just
how hot the enclosure gets. I at first thought the fan had died,
but it hadn't. Also, and I believe this is critical, there is very
little space between the bottom of the drive and where it mounts into
the enclosure. At least when the drive was mounted internally in
my computer case I was able to leave a lot of space between drive bays.
This area must heat up horribly in the drive enclosure, and it's right
where the drive electronics and motor spindle are located. I figure
the data corruption probably occurred from the drive electronics
getting hot.

Perhaps maxtor drives run too hot to put in these enclosures without
more cooling? Should I switch to western digital? It's hard to tell
for me with only this one drive failing, which is why I'd like to
hear from others out there.

"Rod Speed" wrote in
:


"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...



http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/ser...rranty/faq.htm
The worst is actually 90 days.


I also noticed this crappy warranty support from maxtor
when I checked out their website a couple of days ago. The
90-day warranty on the 3000LS isn't surprising considering
the number of problems I've seen posted in forums about these.

It's a pity the ADS enclosure gets so hot because the firewire
interface was working wonderfully. I was able to capture direct
from digital video camcorder to the external drive with zero
dropped frames. It looks like I'm going to have to rip the
electronics out of the ADS and build a custom fan-cooled enclosure.

druid3 wrote:

I'm interested in hearing from people who have external hard
drive enclosures. Are you having any heat related problems
such as drives getting corrupt after prolonged usage or outright
dying? Anyone out there having no problems?

My enclosure is an ADS dual link (firewire/USB) in which I
installed a Maxtor 160 gig. The enclosure has a tiny fan located
near the power supply.

Peering into the guts of the enclosure, I can see an electronic
component from the power supply circuit board is placed squarely
in front of the fan, thus obstructing some of the flow from the
hard drive. I think this component is a bridge rectifier, but
it's hard to see since there's a steel cage all around the power
supply. Is the fan perhaps only good enough to cool the enclosure's
power supply but doing very little for the hard drive itself?

My maxtor drive worked fine until i placed it in the enclosure.
Afterwards, it started corrupting data and eventually it developed
a horrible mechanical rattle that would go away only if I turned
off the drive for an hour to cool. Of course, once I heard the
rattle I knew the drive could no longer be trusted, but I wanted
to see if the issue was heat related.

I suspect the enclosure is to blame -it's very cramped and you can
feel how warm it gets in operation. When you take off the external
plastic shell and feel the metal shell underneath, you realize just
how hot the enclosure gets. I at first thought the fan had died,
but it hadn't. Also, and I believe this is critical, there is very
little space between the bottom of the drive and where it mounts into
the enclosure. At least when the drive was mounted internally in
my computer case I was able to leave a lot of space between drive bays.
This area must heat up horribly in the drive enclosure, and it's right
where the drive electronics and motor spindle are located. I figure
the data corruption probably occurred from the drive electronics
getting hot.

Perhaps maxtor drives run too hot to put in these enclosures without
more cooling? Should I switch to western digital? It's hard to tell
for me with only this one drive failing, which is why I'd like to
hear from others out there.





very possible, I have seen problems with some of the cheaper enclosures,
and not only heat related, but also the PSU some of them use are tiny,
and not really upto running larger hard drives

a client of mine lost 3 x 250GB WD drives this way, before giving up and
buying LaCie drives

I have 8 of those LaCie 250GB Firewire D2 drives, all have performed
without any problems, only getting a little warm to the touch, and thats
after weeks of 24 x 7 operation

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