Just some background, before I get to my actual questions.
Upgraded my S260P on Wed to a new Seagate 5400.3 (perpendicular) 80gb drive. After the install, wow, talk about quiet and a bit faster than my stock 4200 Toshiba . But after that, really started to feel like it was running unusually hot. I’ve never noticed it being this toasty before, and I’ve never really monitored HD temps on anything I’ve owned, never had a need. The whole point of this 5400.3 was that it used less power than most 5400 drives.
So, it should run cooler and/or less battery power, or both. Anyway, after talking to a couple folks that agreed it sounded like it might be something going on, I open the case up again. Nothing else looked abnormal, fan was still running, everything connected correctly when I opened up, blah blah. One guy I spoke with mentioned the vent holes on some laptop drives. I checked, the stock Toshiba didn’t have one, the Seagate did. If you’ve had your S drive out, you are familiar w/ the cage, and that does in fact totally block the vent hold on the Seagate. I could never find any vent holes on the Toshiba, but if there were any on either side, either the cage or the plastic sticky pad on the bottom of the drive would have blocked them as well, so nothing sig different there between the two drives.
Before I removed it, I did do some temp monitoring, but I don’t think I did enough. It got up to over 100F pretty quickly, but it just felt so hot to the touch, I didn’t keep monitoring for an extended period, just put the Toshiba back while I had it open earlier today. Now, as I monitor the Toshiba, I get around 111F on average, which really doesn’t feel all that warm to the touch. 100F on the Seagate for some reason seemed to be heating up the palm-rest and bottom more than 111F on the Toshiba, is that even possible?
So…my questions…
1. Anybody running a drive w/ a vent hole on it that would be blocked by the cage assembly? Are you at all concerned about it?
2. Anybody monitoring their temps w/ other 5400rpm drives that could speak to whether or not they run hotter.
3. Anything else I should consider/check?
After running back on the Toshiba 4200, I’m really starting to think maybe I’ve lost my mind and that they were really running the same and I’ve just gotten all worked up about it. I’m considering putting the Seagate back in and running temp monitoring for awhile now that I know a constant temp for my Toshiba.
I ran the Seagate for 2 days, both including a solid 8 hour block at work where the laptop was on all day with the exception of lunch. It never skipped a beat then, so maybe it’s all OK.
Thoughts?
Chris
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