John Corliss wrote:
> My system is set up with two hard drives and I use XXCopy:
>
> http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm
>
> to clone one to the other on demand. I do *not* use RAID because I want
> control over when a backup copy is made. Unfortunately, I recently fried
> my main hard drive and had to send it back.
>
> Yesterday, I received the replacement hard drive from Newegg.com and
> have installed it. Since I've now gone through two secondary hard drives
> in what I consider to be short order, it's time to figure out why this
> is happening. Kony (my thanks to you!) and somebody else (sorry, I can't
> find the thread now) suggested that I look into cooling the hard drives.
> This makes a lot of sense to me because they're mounted right on top of
> one another, and when I touch them after running the computer for a
> while, they're both rather warm - bordering on HOT.
>
> Time to cool those puppies.
>
> I've been looking at various fan additions and what I really want to do
> is to blow directly ONTO the hard drives in order to maximize heat
> removal. This, however, will blow dust onto the hard drives and as Kony
> mentioned, "while a drive is sealed, most have a filtered vent hole
> still." This means that dust still has a way into the drive, although
> it's a difficult path. Thus, I would think that it's better to suck air
> away from the drives rather than blow onto them.
>
> Mounting a hard drive in a fan unit that fits into a spare 5.25" bay is
> not an option, because I want to cool both hard drives. However, I'm
> thinking of additionally adding a 5.25" bay mounted case fan in the
> middle bay (I have three) to cool my two DVD drives and provide
> additional case ventilation.
>
> But back to the hard drives, I'd like to find something that will mount
> so as to suck the hot air right off of the hard drives and out of the
> case. I would prefer not to use something that will suck the heat off of
> the hard drives and distribute it into the case, but maybe that
> additional fan in the 5.25" empty bay will render that concern of no
> consequence. Any recommendations?
>
> TIA

I just found this setup:

http://proline.com/tech/stacker/index.htm

It mounts to the bottom of the case using velcro. I like the way it
leaves a space under the bottom-most drive. Kinda low air flow (only
10.4 cfm total) but that might be enough since it's in addition to spacing.

Looks like it might work if I used it in conjunction with a 5.25" bay
fan setup.

It still amazes me the way that my case's slide-in hard drive mounting
bracket stacks the hard drives so closely together. True stupidity on
the part of some engineer. For the time being I think I'll fabricate an
extension of some sort so that I can get some space between the two hard
drives.

--
Regards from John Corliss