External hard drive DIY cooling

[K0stas]

Goodday everyone!

 

I am in the process of building a small home theater and I will be using external hard drives to store my media. Using a hard drive monitor software though I noticed that the drives would reach temperatures over 45 or even 50 degrees celsius during hot days which is unacceptable for me.

 

After trying to find a solution I thought about building a simple 2x140mm fan cooling base which will be powered directly from the wall. I have trouble finding the necessary components though, specifically a schuko to 3 pin fan adapter. All the adapters I found are meant to be used with a power supply which leads me to believe that I am not using the right keywords to find what I need. Can someone direct me to the component I need to be able to power the fans?

 

Finally, would it be possible to give the cooling base trigger capability in order to power the fans automatically once a hard drive is powered on?

 

Thank you in advance

 

 

[Windows7ge]

Are you willing to do some cutting/modding/soldering? It wouldn't be hard to set this up with hobby electronics. You could wire it to a temp sensor module that turns the fans on when the cabinet reaches a certain temperature or you could trigger it when the computer is turned on/off.

[K0stas]

6 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Are you willing to do some cutting/modding/soldering? It wouldn't be hard to set this up with hobby electronics. You could wire it to a temp sensor module that turns the fans on when the cabinet reaches a certain temperature or you could trigger it when the computer is turned on/off.

Sure, I already have the necessary equipment to do so and as long as it's nothing that requires advanced knowledge I can do it.

 

I haven't though about a temp sensor but I prefer the fans to be powered on along with the hard drives since from what I have seen they reach high temperatures in a matter of minutes and by the time the cabinet warms up enough for the sensor to work the drives will have already reached undesirable temperatures.

 

Also, the computer trigger would be nice If I was using a dedicated HTPC but since I will be using my main PC the fans will end up running for no reason most of the day. I guess the power button for the fans is better for my use-case instead of a trigger.

 

Do you know what components I will need to connect the fans to a wall socket?

[Windows7ge]

8 minutes ago, K0stas said:

I guess the power button for the fans is better for my use-case instead of a trigger.

You mean opt for a manual power switch? That's an option. The drives will always be receiving standby power so it'd be quite a bit more tricky to run the fans only when they're spinning. I would at least give the temp module idea a shot. Depending on where you place the sensor and how you set the hysteresis it would work well to operate only when the drives get warm and turn off after they cool down.

 

You could spend all day fine tuning it but once it's set it's set (unless you open the cabinet while it's running then it may turn off prematurely).