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how to measure HDs' temperature

A

aurgathor

Jan 1, 1970
0
A couple of hours ago I almost toasted my 18 Gig
Cheetah -- I was having a couple of bluescreens with
write errors to C:, and upon closer examination, the
drive was almost too hot to touch. (

Anyhow, I'd like to avoid this in the future, so what is
the "best" way to measure the HD's temperature?
The motherboard is an old dual P233MMX with no
onboard temperature sensors (it was a manufacturing
option, BTW, but never seen it on any)

The ideal solution would have a small onscreen
gauge, a temperature controlled fan, and some
kind of audible warning if the temperature goes over
some set value.

A termperature ontrolled fan is probably the easiest
because it's just a carefully chosen series NTC thermistor
(or an encapsulated thermal switch) and a fan. Another
thermistor (a little higher) and a buzzer could provide
the audible feedback, but I have no good idea for
measurement and display. In theory, I could use an
analog data acquisition card and some sensor, but the
DAQ cards aren't exactly cheap.

Any idea?
 
J

Jim Meyer

Jan 1, 1970
0
aurgathor said:
A couple of hours ago I almost toasted my 18 Gig
Cheetah -- I was having a couple of bluescreens with
write errors to C:, and upon closer examination, the
drive was almost too hot to touch. (

Anyhow, I'd like to avoid this in the future, so what is
the "best" way to measure the HD's temperature?

"Best" is in the eye of the beholder. I'd simply put a fan on
the drive that would keep it cool at the maximum expected ambient,
turn the fan on fully, and get on with my business.

Jim
 
I

Ian Stirling

Jan 1, 1970
0
aurgathor said:
A couple of hours ago I almost toasted my 18 Gig
Cheetah -- I was having a couple of bluescreens with
write errors to C:, and upon closer examination, the
drive was almost too hot to touch. (

Anyhow, I'd like to avoid this in the future, so what is
the "best" way to measure the HD's temperature?
The motherboard is an old dual P233MMX with no
onboard temperature sensors (it was a manufacturing
option, BTW, but never seen it on any)

The drive may have onboard temperature sensors, and in that case, it's
a question of software.
Is the Cheetah SCSI?
SMART for example tells me that my laptop HD is at 35C, and my server
hard drives are at around 40C.
 
J

John Fields

Jan 1, 1970
0
A couple of hours ago I almost toasted my 18 Gig
Cheetah -- I was having a couple of bluescreens with
write errors to C:, and upon closer examination, the
drive was almost too hot to touch. (

Anyhow, I'd like to avoid this in the future, so what is
the "best" way to measure the HD's temperature?
The motherboard is an old dual P233MMX with no
onboard temperature sensors (it was a manufacturing
option, BTW, but never seen it on any)

The ideal solution would have a small onscreen
gauge, a temperature controlled fan, and some
kind of audible warning if the temperature goes over
some set value.

A termperature ontrolled fan is probably the easiest
because it's just a carefully chosen series NTC thermistor
(or an encapsulated thermal switch) and a fan. Another
thermistor (a little higher) and a buzzer could provide
the audible feedback, but I have no good idea for
measurement and display. In theory, I could use an
analog data acquisition card and some sensor, but the
DAQ cards aren't exactly cheap.

Any idea?

http://www.sensorsci.com/ictempsensor.htm
 
T

Tim Shoppa

Jan 1, 1970
0
aurgathor said:
A couple of hours ago I almost toasted my 18 Gig
Cheetah -- I was having a couple of bluescreens with
write errors to C:, and upon closer examination, the
drive was almost too hot to touch. (

Anyhow, I'd like to avoid this in the future, so what is
the "best" way to measure the HD's temperature?

Most recent (meaning in the past half-decade) drives can sense
drive temperature and report it electronically over the SCSI
bus through one of the drive's Mode Sense or Log Sense commands.
There's a industry-wide semi-standard for this sort of information
called SMART.

See, for an example report from a Seagate Cheetah drive,

http://www.torque.net/scsi/st318451_smt_a.html

The tools that generate these reports can be found at

http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

Tim.
 
Å

ånønÿmøu§

Jan 1, 1970
0
A termperature controlled fan is probably the easiest
because it's just a carefully chosen series NTC thermistor
(or an encapsulated thermal switch) and a fan. Another
thermistor (a little higher) and a buzzer could provide
the audible feedback, but I have no good idea for
measurement and display.
You can just use a thermistor and drive a voltage comparator with that. The comparators output could than drive a relay
to turn on the fan.
 
A

aurgathor

Jan 1, 1970
0
Took a look at that site, unfortunately, they
have only linux binaries.
 
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