Frying "HOT" Drives

I

Imagine

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I use 4 drives in my recording studio, all for various tasks, but I noticed yesterday, with the weather in the mid to high 90's, these boxes get frying hot.

Is this normal? Shouldn't they be sitting next to an AC? They're so hot, I can't even hold one in my hands for longer than 3 seconds.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.
Dean
 
Sounds a bit hot if you ask me -- the only part of the computer that should get too hot to handle is the processor and the GPU (and sometimes RAM, but not to the extent of a processor).

Hard drives should be warm or hot to the touch, but not so hot that you cannot hold them (although a few chips on the PCboard on the bottom may be extremely hot -- the overall unit should not be frying hot).

Are the drives properly and adequately ventilated? They may be operating within normal temperatures, but you can bet your life that they'd last a lot longer if you could bring them down a few degrees.

Even though it may be 90 degrees outside, it should be 80 degrees or lower inside where the computers are located. Unless they're custom-built or "special" in some way, they're meant to operate at around room temperature. Operating them in 90 degree temps will certainly kill them fast.
 
I recall talking to seagate a while back about hard drive reliability and they said that 50C was the hottest they recommend the drive to operate over the long run which is 112F. They told me that even small drops in temp can yield major reliability gains.
My 15,000RPM SCSI drives right now are running at 36C which is 97F which is barely warm to the touch - If you're burning your hand on them, my guess is that they are easily 50C+ so I might be worried. If its in a G5 tower, maybe there is a program that you can download to adjust the fan speeds a bit higher...
 
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