Cooling harddrives

[_Sebaz]

I'm DIY'ing a NAS with a raspberry pi and some WD reds. I want to put it in a wooden case which I've made myself. Does this case need a fan to cool the HDD's, or can I just leave it closed?

[SCHISCHKA]

hard drives dont really need to be cooled but the raspberry pi does. have you seen the performance of a r-pi as a NAS? its pretty slow. Anyway the fan you put on the r-pi will cool the drives

[FallenDark7]

Aslong the air has some space to go out, you shoud be ok, but one 120 or 140 fan woud be cool, meybe you can mouth it alond the side, so cools the whole thing.

 

[Naeaes]

Wood is an excellent insulator so any heat the drives generate would stay with the drives so, yeah, add a fan. No harm can come from it.

[LawrenceBarnes2013]

Not really, HDDs don't get that hot, passive cooling is sufficient.

[RollinLower]

If you plan on keeping the case closed then i would reccomend putting in atleast one fan. Just to keep the air circulating.

 

HDDs keep cool passively through their steel casing, but they rely on case fans to get the heat away from the casing and out into the ambient air.

[RollinLower]

1 minute ago, RollinLower said:

So i quoted myself instead of editing the first message. Ffs

 

[Majestic]

Get the "up board" instead of the Raspberry if size is of concern. Otherwise get some atom board (J1900, N32xx)

[SaladFingers]

HDD's definitely get hot, I don't know why people claim otherwise. They are electronic devices with power going through their circuits, and also have mechanical moving parts.

 

If there is no airflow, it's mathematically certain that heat will be building up. I've seen my WD blacks approach 58C on a closed case in the past. Just a little 80cm exhaust fan and voila, they never went above 50C.