HD temp hot to the touch, is this bad?

[agentcue]

While running my old P166 system with the cover off(I am aware this is a no no) I was checking for overheating, and my Western Digital 2.1 IDE HD was hot to the touch. Is this necesarily bad? I have never had any huge problems such as a HD crash, I even have no bad sectors on the disk.

[Chainsaw]

agentcue,
I'd be a bit concerned with the temp 'cause it surely won't do it any good. You could get a drive bay cooler, mounts right if front of the HDD. I have one, but I use mine in an empty drive bay and I reversed the fans to exhaust instead of intake. As far as leaving the case open, if that's what it takes to keep things cooler, then by all means do it. You'd probably be surprised how many o/c'ers are running with their case open. Granted, it's ideal to have your case set up to have adequate flow through and keep a filter on all intakes to keep the dust out, but more important is to maintain the temp well below the max. I dust out the case with some canned air about once a week anyway, keeps the heatsinks more efficient.
Do what ya can to keep the HDD cool, add a chassis fan if you don't have one.
Best of luck,
Chainsaw

[Target]

Kinda depends on "how hot" it was..... As with most things in your puter, they generate heat based on the amount of current flowing through them, and the usage they see.

Warm hard-drives are certainly nothing to worry about, hotter ones are even likely if you use them a lot...... too hot to touch however, might well be cause for concern though....especially in light of the fact that you had your case off (which isn't necessarily a no-no btw).

I am sure if you want to head over to the Western Digital site and look for specific documentation on your HD, you might find an operating temp. range for the model you have. You could then take a temp reading of your disk and compare it to specs.

I'm betting though, that it is normal, and your drive is fine.

[DavidX]

I agree 100% with Target. It's all too easy to get worried over nothing if you're not used to PCs.

The various components of a PC naturally heat up during operation due to electrical current and/or, in the case of a hard drive, mechanical friction. They are designed to cope perfectly well at that temperature - as long, of course, that they don't go beyond the manufacturers' specifications and run too hot. If your hard drive is so hot that you can hardly touch it, then worry; if it just gets quite warm, don't.

[EVGTech]

Hard drive heat isnt sucha big issue but it can be. It's not so much the hard drive getting hot as the other components getting hot.
If the hard drive runs hot normally then you may find the system develop a problem when you add other hot devices. the one that causes the most problem is a CPU. if you plug a hot cpu into the machine without adequate case cooling the naturally hot drive will overheat and crash. seen this happen a few times. if you have a modern atx case this shouldnt be much of a problem but from the size of the drive i suspect that you have an at case which may not have adequate cooling.