What's the hottest area of the hard drive?

[Szech]

I was trying to think of a way to water cool a hard drive (without dunking it in water http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif ). I figure that if I make a water block that has heatsink-like pins on it, and put the pins near the hottest part of the hard drive, the heated air will transfer heat to the pins, which will then transfer the heat to the water. Sound good?

Anyway, the hottest part of the hard drive is usually the bottom, right?

[Steve R Jones]

Heat rises.

I wouldn't experiment on a drive with valuable data on it http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[tonym]

Hi Szech,

I don't want to discourage you, so experiment away.

However, I think you sould look at a few sites that have some interesting thermal information and products:
http://www.bergquistcompany.com/therm.htm
http://www.molex.com/cgi-bin/bv/molex/index_login.jsp and select "Thermal/Acoustic" in the "Quick Links" menu.

There are also some hard drive coolers out there that are pretty good at what they do:
http://www.thecardcooler.com/shopcart/Backpack/backpackspecifications.htm http://www.thecardcooler.com/shopcart/Fans/dual_Back_pack.htm http://www.thecardcooler.com/shopcart/hddcoolkit1specs.html http://www.web-tronics.com/webtronics/heatredmouns.html http://www.pcpowerandcooling.org/products/cooling/drive/index.htm http://www.vbd.com/cgi-bin/webcart/webcart.cgi?CONFIG=mountain&CHANGE=YES&NEXTPAGE=prod2.htm&CODE=149 http://stores.yahoo.com/justcoolerusa/hardrivcool.html
And of course Scott did a review on this product back in 1999: http://www.sysopt.com/reviews/istorm/
http://www.aavidthermalloy.com/atp/articles/basicPkgDeviceCool/index.html

Hope this stuff helps out.

Have fun...

Tony