he's putting the stress on the wrong part. OK, it takes the drive a bit longer to heat up. but does that matter?

heat only damages a drive in the long run. in the long run, the temperature is the same for both the stock HDD and the HDD with the heatsink, period.

yes, since you won't be stressing the HD 24/7, therefore the temperature of the HD with the heatsink will be lower average over an extended period in comparison with the "no-heatsinked" setup.


lookie here, a HD with heatsinks incorporated to cope with the heat



(pics (c) @ Tech-Report)

it does matter. it does make a difference in temps OVERALL.

you are correct, in the "long run" the HDD with passive heatsink have a lower average temp.

The result indicated 41C with and without the passive cooling heatsink. Hence, there is no benefit unless fan is used. While it takes a bit longer to heat up merely pointing out the time it takes for the passive heatsink to absorb heat.

If I read in between the lines, the answer is obvious as you indicated "waste of money" without the fan.

TeuS, I believe you might be referring to the Pros and Cons; with which the product rated "super cooling" should have indicated in conjunction with fan. This I concur.

Damn it, I couldn't sleep at all. It's 4 in the morning.

TeuS made a correct comment, "long periods @ high temps = can be dangerous"

by using the HS you won't have "long periods" but very short ones compared with the No-HS setup :mrt:

I agree that for short stressing the heatsink has it's use.

I wonder how the idle temps are, they also matter. Wouldn't the idle temps of the HDD with/without the heatsink be the same, more or less?

yes they would, but it's the load temps that matter.

here's what I'm trying to point out, for example.
every other minute when HD is under load it will increase 1°C without the HS, and 0.5°C with the HS.

When cooling down, both will be the same, -0.5°C every other minute.
so while copying files, playing games, loading maps, download files, the usage will go up and down, as will the temp.

now do note in the review the tester said this
1.5 hours of intensive disk tasks. I don't know about you, but in a 24 hours period how many of hours is your disk working at 100% (same as with CPU cycles for that matter).

so YES in the end both HD temps will be the same, but it is the inter-mediate temps which matter most (unlike CPU's).
here's what I mean in a graph using the above mentioned "theoretical ideal"; do not that in real life those difference won't be as big, but it gives you an idea:

coolio, seems someone else did some testing of his own and found the same results : http://www.madshrimps.be/gotofaqlink.php?linkid=1926