How hot is too hot? (HDD)

[NotMyBest2Day]

Well, a few weeks ago, I swapped 11gb of data off a storage drive onto another one to format it with 512-byte sectors instead of the default 4k sectors. So I decided that since I had the time and was thinking about it anyways, I'd do the same thing for one of the other drives. I moved all 54gb over to another drive, formatted, and moved it all back, and defrag has been going now for three hours and it looks to be about half-done. Just out of curiosity, I opened up the settings page of MBM5, and that's when I thought of the question that is the title.

<img src="http://www.lifelessempathy.net/pics/random/141F_hdd.gif"/>

E: which is the drive I'm working with (120gb) is a Western Digital, but it's a relic. It is a first-generation 120gb 8mb cache Caviar. I bought it the day the 120gb 8mb cache caviars went on sale, and it doesn't have a temp sensor in it. The other three do though, obviously.

[Zefram]

Newer WD Caviar with black faceplate is cooler because they start using FDB motor, the original WD caviar uses conventional ball bearing motor...........
Dont let your HDD above 40 degrees.........

[bluegreenshxt]

Uhhh...what are the temps in Celcius? Hard drive manufacturers usually specify a max temp for the HDDs so you can try to look it up on their website. My harddrive runs at around 30-34C which is barely lukewarm for a HDD.

Actually depending on the drive I think above 40C is fine...Some of the older drives are really hot to touch..

[Zefram]

the highest C: drive temps is 104 F, which is exactly 40 Degrees Celcius.....

[NotMyBest2Day]

Well I mean, the 141F (60.5C) temp was just a peak. It didn't stay there for days kind of a thing. It was only at most an hour or so. The other three Caviars that I have are pretty new ones at least. They have temp sensors in them. They don't have the drive-cooling technology and such that the most recent generation has, but they do stay pretty cool most of the time.