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Forum Discussion
normal drive temperature range?
Hey guys, WD says the normal operating temp is 0c-65c (for both models - I guess cooling is much better in the eda500). Though I have been reading studies that say over 40c can shorten the lifespan. The temp range in the pic is at idle, I did not test under load. What do you think and what do you leave the fan settings on? I would prefer not to use cool for energy savings. thanks
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The EDA500 is certainly going to keep a single drive cooler. Fill it up, and it will likely reach the same temperature range. My drives usually run around 38C when mostly idle.
Setting the fan to "cool" is going to have minimal effect on power usage. It's the noise level that most worry about. If that's not an issue for you, then set it to "cool".
Blanker-2 wrote:
... I guess cooling is much better in the eda500 ...
It's just that there is much less to cool. Very little electronics other than the one disk.
Blanker-2 wrote:
Though I have been reading studies that say over 40c can shorten the lifespan. The temp range in the pic is at idle, I did not test under load. What do you think and what do you leave the fan settings on? I would prefer not to use cool for energy savings.
Impact of temperature on hard disk drive reliability in large datacenters (2011) found that 40-41c case temps increased the annual failure rate by about 6% - so there is an effect, but it is relatively slight for your temperatures. I haven't seen any information on how temperature might affect helium-filled drives.
If that is worrisome, your options are to either move the NAS to a place where the ambient temperature is cooler, or switch the cooling mode from balanced to cool. Maybe also see if it is positioned so it has good airflow around the fans.
Enabling spindown might also be worth considering. That should offset the energy costs of switching the fans to "cool".
- Thanks. As we approach winter here in NY the ambient temps should be dropping. Spin down? Do people here really use that feature? People used to flip out in the freenas forum when someone wanted to spin down their nas. I guess i assumed this was a nas convention. If anyone here uses spin down I'm curious what settings you all use.
Blanker-2 wrote:
Spin down? Do people here really use that feature? People used to flip out in the freenas forum when someone wanted to spin down their nas.There has been some debate about it over the years here also, but many people do use it. One issue is that it the NAS will be unresponsive for a few seconds when the disks spin up.
On my main NAS I enable spindown on schedule - disabling it during the day, but enabling it at night with a 5 minute threshold. There are background activities at night (backup being one), so I don't think it actually spins down that much. My backup NAS have it enabled all the time.
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