[Dirvish] Ideas for cool running external hard drives

[Jon Radel]

Loren M. Lang wrote:
> I currently am doing nightly backups of my server onto two USB hard
> drives that are rotated weekly.  A nightly backup only takes 30-45
> minutes on average, but the USB drives are left plugged in and running
> for a full week.  The USB enclosures are usually quiet warm during the
> entire time they are plugged in and I am concerned that this is causing
> a high rate of failure.  I have lost 4 hard drives in 2 years while they
> are still under warranty, at least.  It appears that USB does not offer
> any mechanisms to power down the drives when they are not in use.  I
> only have the drives mounted during the 30-45 minutes they are running,
> but this hasn't helped.  I am curious on what ideas you might have for
> external hard drives that only need to run for a short time at night.
> Either a cooler enclosure or alternatives like Firewire or E-SATA if
> they can power down drives.

I have a bunch of external drives which I keep separated with little
wire racks instead of stacking them directly on top of each other
(generally sold, if I recall correctly, for increasing usable storage in
one's pantry) and then use a 9 inch fan to blow air across the whole row
of equipment (there are some cable modems and the like in there as
well).  I have to replace the fan about once a year, but meanwhile the
equipment stays *much* cooler.

Of course, figuring out how to power down the drives and skipping the
fan would be much greener.

--Jon Radel
jon at radel.com
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