Hard drive - external - how hot is too hot?

igirl

Registered
I just bought a (second) Hitachi Deskstar 2TB 7200 RPM drive and it's sitting in a dock while I'm writing transcoded Video_TS to H.264 files to it from Handbrake.

It's very hot to touch right now - even in open air in the dock. Not scalding hot - but it would be close to a burn if one were forced to hold onto it with bare hands. Hot Potato (approximate heat level) Temperature Monitor will only show internal Mac stuff - not externals.

The intended destination of this drive was to replace a Samsung 1TB drive sitting along side another 2TB Deskstar (Deathstar) in a Rosewill 2 bay JBOD. That enclosure itself seems to run very cool right now and has a fan. I have no way of knowing the internal temps of the JBOD.

MAYBE being in the enclosure will actually help it cool off? But this does seem a bit too hot for a bare drive in a dock - air cooled. I've used many other drives in this dock and not noticed nearly as much heat. Being brand new - I can return it if needed.

Thoughts anyone? Is this "normal"?

More info - I let it run doing the transcoding overnight and this morning it's much cooler than it was before - then I realized that last night I was also playing a Video_TS from it over WLAN on my Apple TV in addition to running Handbrake. That at least explains some of the heat - from heavy use.
 
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Hard drives get hot... very hot. You should be able to touch it for a few moments, but it's not uncommon for drives to be too hot to touch for an extended time when they're under load (i.e., reading and/or writing continuously to them).
 
Thanks - I wasn't sure - at first, right after streaming video and transcoding at the same time, it was marginal. Once the video was over for a while it settled down to a more reasonable temp with less read/write load.
 
Just like El said they do get hot. I can't tell you how many times I've taken a machine apart to pull the drive, thinking I gave plenty of time for the drive to cool, and grab a hot drive. But if the drive is in the open with that kind of load, I'd get a mid sized desk fan to blow some air on it. I do that when I'm trying to pull data from failed drives and it can make all the difference sometimes.
 
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