Here we will discuss the problem of hard drive overheating. In general, the most vulnerable part to overheating is the hard drive. Some areas of the computer can heat up to 80 degrees and this is the norm, but for disks it is already over 60 degrees. For discs, the optimum temperature is 40-50 degrees. If it is 60, then soon it will come to you and only specialists can extract information from it, and then 50 to 50. So why does the disk deteriorate from temperature?
- At high temperatures, the disc package suffers. Disc warping occurs. Soon "bad zones" may appear. That is, a disk fragment where information is not written or read. Then soon it will fail. It consists of ceramic, glass or aluminum coating.
- The disk head also suffers. At high temperatures, it quickly deteriorates.
- The windings of the stepper motor are damaged. That is, the varnish from the windings burns out, which can lead to damage to the engine, and subsequently to the disk itself.
- Damage to parts located on the board that is attached to the disk.
What are the causes of computer overheating?
For starters, these can be very significant programs, games. If the computer is not strong, then it is powerful. Same with viruses. Poor cooling and a lot of dust that does not dissipate heat. There may also be more serious problems. From old age, the engine driver began to cover itself. This is the most common. It heats the entire disk over 70 degrees. But when the temperature exceeds 70, then the computer is instantly cut down.
How to treat these problems?
First, put a couple of coolers that would be better cooling. Clean your computer from dust and dirt. Check your computer for viruses and clean out weighty unnecessary programs. Add giga 2 ram. If it does not help, then get the driver. Exactly the same! And solder. If not possible, take it to a repair point.
DO NOT PUT ANOTHER BOARD FROM ANOTHER DISK OR THE LEFT DRIVER TO THE HARD DISK!!!
By the way. You can download download a free program to increase the speed of coolers. For example Speedfan
Regardless of the purpose for which we use our computer, memory is an important part of our system. Nowadays, we store more and more information in our computer.
Most computer users prefer to keep their:
- documentation;
- letters;
- music;
- photos;
- pictures, etc. on various storage devices, thereby refusing the usual hard copies.
The most popular and preferred storage device is the hard drive because most users rely on it for reliability.
However, there are a large number of reasons that can lead to hard drive failure. Of course, in the event of data loss, you think less about the reasons that contributed to their loss. More you think about the data itself. However, if you knew what it can cost to recover data from a hard drive, you would prevent it from breaking. This is especially true for the most common cause of hard drive failure - overheating.
The speed of the old hard drives was low, so there was no such problem as overheating of the hard drives before. However, more recently released hard drives with a speed of 7200-10000 rpm heat up during their operation, as a result of which the temperature inside the disk reaches 70 C and above. Of course, this problem was taken into account by the developers, so today hard drives have an internal temperature sensor, computers have fans and other devices to prevent heating. In addition, some utilities show the temperature of your hard drive.
Modern hard disk models operate at temperatures of 50-55 C, but it should be noted that the hard disk is the most sensitive part of the computer to high temperatures. The very fact that all your information is stored on a hard drive is very important. In addition, the irreparable loss of your data will be a disaster for you. There are also situations where even the most advanced data recovery companies cannot guarantee that you will get your information back.
Why is heating critically dangerous for a hard drive? To best understand how a hard drive works, you need to look at how each part of it works in the context of overheating.
Hard magnetic disks.
Hard disks are a place to store data. They are made of lightweight aluminum or optical glass and ceramics and coated with a magnetic layer. When the disk heats up, hard magnetic disks expand, changing their size and geometry. These changes lead to the destruction of the magnetic layer on the surface where the data is stored and create defects. Physical damage to the surface leads to the appearance of "bad" or countable sectors.
Read/write heads.
The read/write head of a hard disk is the interface between hard disks, where data is stored, and the electronic components that make up the rest of the hard disk. The heads read and write data to hard magnetic disks. The read/write head is not connected to the media.
It is this aspect that distinguishes hard drives from:
- diskettes;
- VCRs;
- cassettes.
The disk heads work on the surface of the disk without physically touching the hard magnetic disks. When the air inside heats up, the distance between the hard magnetic disks and the heads decreases, which increases the possibility of head breakage.
Head drive.
A head drive is a device attached to the heads that is responsible for moving them around magnetic hard disks. All modern hard drives use a voice coil drive that controls the location of the head. Overheating causes damage to any part of the drive, so the drive is no exception. Thus, the failure of the drive heads directly has a negative impact on the operation of the hard drive.
Controller.
A round plate(s) attached to the outside of the hard drive provides control over the movement of the internal parts. Modern models have SM and VCM controller. Obviously, even a small temperature jump, for example, in the summer, can cause the SM and VCM controller to burn out. Considering the importance of your data, you can imagine how unpleasant the consequences of this incident will be for you.
Thus, we have studied the problems that can occur due to overheating of the hard drive.
What is the optimal temperature for the operation of the hard drive and extending its life (and your data!) And how to maintain this temperature?
Most commonly used 7200 rpm hard drives run hotter than 5400 rpm hard drives. The ideal temperature for a hard drive is 40 C. An acceptable temperature is 50 C. If the hard drive continues to work at 60 C, then you may have problems, and at 70 C, you will definitely have problems.
Thus, the hard drive does not tolerate extreme heat.
High temperatures are detrimental to every laptop and computer. Due to poor cooling, a video card, processor or hard drive, regardless of their cost, will quickly fail. Let's see why the hard drive is heating up, and what should be done in this situation.
Causes of overheating
What can cause a laptop drive to overheat? There are several reasons:
- Winchester is located in close proximity to other components that are constantly working. The heat generated by them is transferred to the hard drive, as a result of which it heats up.
- Oxidation of the contacts at the bottom of the device. It is exposed to external influences, as it is not protected by a special casing. This leads to the fact that the disk heats up and slows down.
- Long-term operation leads to malfunctions and even complete failure. This may be accompanied by an increase in operating temperature or. It is incredibly important to take the right steps in time to correct the problem and save the data on the hard drive.
- Poor cooling, which may be caused by dust, a defective fan, or insufficient airflow. It should be said that this is the most common cause of overheating in all laptops: Hp, Msi, Lenovo, and Asus.
- Poor fastening of the cable that connects the drive and the motherboard. Because of this, current surges across the contacts begin. If the media began to work unstably, then this is the problem.
- Demanding games or programs can heavily load the system or its individual components. As a result, there is a strong increase in temperature in the area of the hard disk.
Normal hard disk temperature
The optimum temperature of the hard drive is 30-50 degrees. If it is higher - this is a cause for concern. After all, regular overheating damages the magnetic coating, which leads to data loss and drive failure. It is likely that after that you will not be able to either return it to a working state, or get the data that was on it.
How to know the temperature?
A special program that can read SMART HDD media will help you determine the temperature of the hard drive. Today there are a lot of them: HD Tune, SpeedFan, HWMonitor, HDDScan, etc. Together with such a utility, you can find out the minimum and maximum operating temperatures of the device, and, based on the information received, take some action.
Overheat prevention
So, knowing the reasons why the drive overheats, let's decide how to stop this process:
If the computer began to regularly warm up, fail and turn off for no reason, most likely the hard drive was damaged due to non-compliance with the above recommendations and, in fact, overheating. In this case, it should be done.
That is, summing up, we can say with confidence that effective cooling is a must-have tool for every computer. After all, its overheating can lead to irreversible consequences: failure of components and loss of important data.
Video (what temperature should the computer have)
A hard disk is a magnetic storage medium. It is one of the most important devices in a computer. The HDD is a round metal plate coated with a thin layer of chromium dioxide. One of the most common hard drive problems is a decrease in the quality of work due to overheating. In this article, we will analyze in detail the essence of this phenomenon.
Why is the hard drive on my computer getting hot?
Signs of HDD overheating can be expressed in program freezing, complete shutdown of the computer, sudden reboot. It is important to eliminate the true causes of overheating, and not deal with its consequences. If you encounter this problem, you must act very quickly. Otherwise, the hard drive may fail, and all the information on it will disappear.
Overheating occurs as a result of:
- long-term operation of the hard disk;
- contact oxidation;
- poor connection of the loop (contact failure);
- low cooling level (cooler breakdown).
The average life of a hard drive is six years. Of course, there are HDD models that are able to work normally and more. It all depends on the materials used in the production and the speed of rotation of the head. It is important to understand that if your hard drive is old, you need to prepare to replace it.
Contact oxidation pretty common problem. Moreover, it cannot be solved programmatically or by means of additional cooling. Humid air is the cause of oxidation. The hard drive board is located on its lower side, so it is practically not protected from moisture in any way.
Unreliable loop connection hard drive to the motherboard leads to a change in current and voltage. It is because of these factors that the hard drive is heated. It is necessary to check the tightness of the cable connection, and if a bad connection is found, eliminate it by cleaning the contacts.
Poor ventilation also leads to an increase in the temperature of the hard drive. The reason may lie in a decrease in the speed of the old fan or dust on its blades, as well as in the breakdown of the cooler. To eliminate this problem, it is necessary to remove contamination or replace faulty cooling devices.
What temperature should the hard drive be?
There are several temperature ranges. Below, we'll take a look at each of them:
- Below 25°C. It is wrong to assume that the lower the temperature of the device, the better. In this range, the material from which the hard drive is made narrows, which can lead to malfunctions or even the benefit of the device.
- 30-45°C. This is the normal temperature of the hard drive.
- 45-52°C. This range is not desirable. However, this is not yet a reason to panic.
- Over 52 °C. This range is considered critical. At this temperature, the wear of the hard drive increases by 2-3 times.
Based on the information above, you now know that the temperature of the hard drive 40 degrees is fine. However, if it manifests itself when the HDD of a computer installed in a cool room is poorly loaded, there is reason to think. After all, with an increase in ambient temperature in the summer, the level of heating of the hard drive will also increase. Therefore, it is better not to be lazy and check for defects leading to overheating of the device. Note that the maximum temperature of a hard drive can be much higher than 52°C. In some devices, it can reach 100°C. However, this should not be allowed under any circumstances.
It is necessary to constantly monitor the temperature of the hard disk. The program used to solve this problem is called Everest Ultimate. This utility has only one drawback - it is paid. If you do not want to spend your money on this software, you can use free programs:
- Piriform Speccy;
- HDD LIFE.
You can download both programs from the official website of the developer. The most interesting utility is HDD LIFE. It allows you to monitor the temperature of your hard drive in a continuous mode, and also provides information about S.M.A.R.T. readings, which will warn you of the risk of data loss.
Winchester is an important component of the system. It works to preserve personal data and those produced by the OS. But in the system with any element there are problems. The hard drive is no exception. It is heated for various reasons, which will have to be dealt with.
Device task
Before dealing with problems that relate to the railway, it is necessary to understand what tasks it performs.
The hard drive is responsible for storing data on the computer. The magnetic recording device works. Helps the system to store data for a long time, freely read and write them.
The fact that the hard drive is heated affects its popularity. If earlier users had no alternative, now everyone can replace a noisy and problematic hard drive with a solid state drive.
Now not every user can afford an SSD, moreover, it is not rational to purchase this device in all systems. But it still features high speed, quiet and smooth operation. Therefore, combined device options are now so popular.
Heating problem
Why is the hard drive getting hot? The fact is that the problem of overheating is often found in this device. Especially problems arise with models operating at a speed of 7200 rpm. On average, the temperature of the hard drive should not rise above 50 ° C, but sometimes there are indicators of 60-70 ° C.
Also undesirable is the reduced temperature of the device. All indicators must be monitored in order to avoid malfunctions.
Causes
If the hard drive on the computer is heating up, you need to find the reasons for this. Of course, there can be a large number of them, but there are five of the most common ones that most likely happened to your device.
Firstly, one of the reasons may be the close location of the components to each other in the case. Sometimes the user calculates the wrong place in the chassis, and an ill-conceived cooling system can exacerbate the situation. Similar problems can occur in the case of the microATX form factor. All components generate heat, and the fans can not cope with the timely cooling.
Secondly, the device may have expired. Typically, a hard drive lasts about 5-6 years, so after this period, overheating and other hard drive problems are possible.
Thirdly, the hard drive heats up due to poor ventilation in the case, as well as a dirty chassis. Dust and dirt are often the main problem in this matter. Many users forget that the PC needs to be cleaned every six months, and if possible even more often.
The fourth reason is the oxidation of contacts. This problem could most likely be attributed to the expired service life, but, unfortunately, this can happen prematurely.
And finally, the fifth reason is problems with the cable. It is possible that the cable is damaged or poorly connected, so the electric current “jumps” and unstable operation leads to overheating.
Temperature detection
In order to make sure that the hard drive is very hot, you need to get data on this. To do this, you will need to measure the temperature. No thermometers or sensors are needed in this case. It will be enough to install the program and analyze the device.
There are many specialized software for measuring temperature, but there are the most popular ones that help to properly test the hard drive. The user can choose to install HDDlife Pro, HWMonitor, SpeedFan. These three utilities do the job and can provide the information you need.
Each program collects data on other components as well. But we are interested in indicators opposite the HDD line or directly the name of the hard drive.
You can understand that the hard drive is heating up by listening to it carefully. Usually it is strange sounds that give out problems with the hard drive. But in this case, it is worthwhile to understand that the problems are already really serious, which means that it is urgent to transfer personal data to another medium until the hard drive deletes them on its own.
What to expect after overheating?
If the hard drive is heated on the computer, it will not lead to anything good. The problem will have to be urgently addressed before more serious consequences appear. If the utility shows a temperature above 60 ° C, you need to immediately protect your personal files from deletion, since the magnetic coating is already starting to get damaged, which means that the sectors are blocking data in them.
Of course, if this has already happened, specialists will help restore the files. But it is not always possible to do this in full, it may not always be possible to cope with the problem in principle.
In general, overheating can lead to the complete "destruction" of the hard drive, so it's best to immediately find the causes and resume the operation of the device.
First thing to do
So, you have determined that the hard drive is heating up. What to do right away? You need to immediately reduce the load on the hard drive. To do this, disable resource-intensive programs, and then carry out defragmentation. To do this, go to "My Computer", select each disk in turn and right-click on it. In the "Properties" select the "Service" tab and find the start of defragmentation. Here you can start checking the hard drive for errors.
By the way, defragmentation is considered by many experts as prevention from various problems. Therefore, it is important to perform it and check the hard drive for errors regularly, at least once every 3-6 months, depending on the system load.
The close arrangement of elements in the body
This is one of the first reasons why the hard drive may heat up. There are several solutions here. Firstly, you can transfer all the components from a small case to a standard ATX form factor, and secondly, you can set up powerful cooling, which will help keep the system in normal temperature conditions.
Service life
Of course, if the hard drive is more than 6 years old, then such problems should not be a surprise to the user. There is a possibility that the railway will live for more than 10 years, but it all depends on the conscientiousness of the manufacturer and his capabilities.
If you have begun to notice that the device is increasingly crashing, overheating or destroying your data, then it is better to purchase a new one.
Poor ventilation and dust
This is perhaps the most common problem. It can also affect the performance of other components. The cleanliness of the case and proper cooling must be carefully monitored all the time, otherwise you can immediately lose the main parts of the system.
Even if you have purchased or built a home PC that generally does not need a powerful cooling system, in addition to the fan on the processor, you still need at least one cooler in the case. If you are planning to make a gaming device, then you should not be stingy and purchase 3-4 coolers in the case and install a powerful fan on the processor.
Cleaning the system unit is an important task for every PC user. He needs to pay attention at least 3-4 times a year. Cleaning the system is easy. To do this, you need to open one of the side covers of the case and immediately get rid of large debris inside. This can be done with a dry cloth.
Next, you will have to blow the system unit either with a small vacuum cleaner or with a special can of compressed air. You also need to remember about the fan blades. They need to be removed, for cleaning use a can of alcohol wipes.
Oxidation and plume problems
If the hard drive is heating up for these reasons, it is best to contact specialists. It will not be easy to get rid of oxidation or change the cable on your own. Although there are instructions for this as well.
In order to rid the board of oxides, you need to unscrew it from the case, inspect for raids and other defects. Next, remove large pieces with a toothpick, and then wipe everything with an eraser. At the end, you can wipe the surface with alcohol wipes and let it dry. Now you can return the board to the place.
If there is a problem with the cable, it is enough to purchase a new one or check the existing one on another hard drive.
Laptop problem
If the hard drive on the laptop is heating up, then you need to repeat all the previous recommendations for the computer's hard drive. First, check the disk and defragment. Be sure to check the temperature afterwards.
Next, you can clean the laptop. But unfortunately, not every user will be able to do this on their own, you may have to resort to the help of specialists. If none of the above helped, you will have to take the hard drive to the masters, who will definitely be able to determine the correctness of its work.
Remember that you should do the above operations yourself carefully. If you do not have experience in this, it is better to immediately contact the service center.
