External harddrives without internal fans?

[Myst and rain]

Hi,

I thought it was a bad idea not to have some sort of internal cooling system, in the form of, for instance, a fan when using a harddrive? I've been looking at external harddrives, and there seem to plenty who don't have fans.

What am I missing here? Do they have some other kind of cooling system? Or don't they need to be cooled, because they're not used as intensely as an internal harddrive?

I'm just curious.

Alwin

[Algiman]

If it is just a hard drive in the box, then heat isn't that much of a problem, even if they are being used intensively. Heat will dissipate quickly enough through the case. Inside a PC you have an environment that is hotter to begin with.

Also, look at early generation MP3 players; they all had internal hard drives running all the time and no cooling fan.

[jemsite]

avoid the fans as they're cheap, small, noisy and will squeek in short order. real PITA (unless you're getting a real nice multi-drive rack).

Get a metal case which will dissipate the heat nicely... glen

[chaos731]

Originally Posted by jemsite

avoid the fans as they're cheap, small, noisy and will squeek in short order. real PITA (unless you're getting a real nice multi-drive rack).

Get a metal case which will dissipate the heat nicely... glen

+1

Metal enclosures act as a heatsink, and should wick away excess heat from the drive. Usually, this isn't a problem for external drives, though.

You could always go with flash memory, though. Noiseless, heatless, no moving parts. Certainly not practical for backing up entire hard drives, naturally, but you can get 16GB flash drives for around $40 now. Crazy stuff.

[Algiman]

I agree with Glen and chaos731, but I also have 2 different maxtor drives on my network that have fans in and they've stayed silent enough for 2 years now. Admittedly they are probably better made than the average USB hard drive.

[Myst and rain]

That's super interesting. I don't know much about technical stuff.

Anyway, I've bought one without a fan. I've ordered a 400GB external drive from Freecom. Kind of like the ones you see here.

I'm also upgrading my internal RAM from 512MB to 2GB! I'm very excited!

Alwin

[Myst and rain]

I've got it. It's amazing!



Alwin

[axemanrio]

Most external enclosures that have a 40mm fan also have a sensor so the fun runs only when the temperature in the enclosure is higher than normal, which rarely happens because there are no other components adding heat (unlike in a Desktop).

I don't like the idea of external hard drives so instead I set up a NAS device with dual 500GB drives, so now I have a central file server and dedicated media server which I can access from any computer on my wireless network. The NAS device also acts as an FTP server so I can access files remotely even while I'm not home

[Myst and rain]

Wow, that sounds amazing! Being able to acces data from out of your home like that, is something that can come in handy, for sure.

How come you don't like the idea of external HDs, then?

Alwin

[axemanrio]

External HDD's have only one function, storage, and they don't work standalone. A NAS device is standalone and is permanently hooked up to my router, which enables me to use it as a file server, media streaming server, ftp server (web server, download and print server as well, if required ).

Trouble is I have 3 computers and found myself duplicating my data and work, to such an extent that I had to version control them lol. Now they all sit on this central file server and can be accessed by any wifi-enabled device.

It's a great investment and very flexible because you can keep upgrading the hard drive/s in them.

[Myst and rain]

I see.

That's pretty amazing stuff you've got there, axemanrio.

Alwin

[losgatosrg350dx]

is there any enclosures you can buy to stick a sata drive in it, with previous data on it...or does any enclosure that you add a drive in - with it require a reformat..??

i have a couple drives that i want to remove movies an etc...and usually i swap em out of my computer in and out and it will access anything like a regular drive.....will any enlosures do this..??

[axemanrio]

You can get a SATA enclosure for that and it will not require a format for the data to be read/copied. Install the drive in your enclosure, copy data and swap it out.

[losgatosrg350dx]

can you suggest a reliable model for me cheap would work too

[losgatosrg350dx]

ive been interested in the NAS ones so i can have a two drive setup for my two 350g sata drives - but everyone tells me the nas ones even tho sata forces a reformat..hmmmm

i wish i could find a model that would do it for me