Safe operating temperature for a "Western Digital" HDD?

[The Strange]

Hi guys, I would like to know more about the safest temperature for an HDD.

First Of all, I'm living in a very hot country, summer average temperature right now is 42.

I like gaming most of the time, always making sure about cooling all my stuff, no such problem about CPU/GPU temperatures but only my HDDs. 

According to "WD" site, max operating temperature is 60.C, so its not such a problem to operate less than this, but I have googled around and got an info saying that failure probability is starting from 55.C, so I should make sure its not reaching 55.C at all, below than this its fine. 

I'm really getting more and more confused, can't get a fixed rule.

 

So guys, here I'm asking, what is the REAL max temperature I can operate and have gaming safely without worries? 

[Senzelian]

There is no definite answer.

The 60°C that WD specifies is the max operating temperature, meaning at that point it will still function properly. That doesn't mean it won't have any effect on it.

 

Generally speaking, anything below 60°C is fine, as long as it's not for a prolonged duration.

 

Personally, I'd make sure it always stays under 50°C, but that doesn't mean it will automatically die at a temperature over 50°C. Just use common sense, make sure it receives enough airflow and you'll be fine for many many years.

[The Strange]

3 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Personally, I'd make sure it always stays under 50°C, but that doesn't mean it will automatically die at a temperature over 50°C. Just use common sense, make sure it receives enough airflow and you'll be fine for many many years.

Its 42.C here in my country, this cannot be satisfied, normally it will operate between 50-54, honestly all I can do is making sure to stay under 54-55.

[leclod]

I agree I also make sure it always stays under 50°C.

 

[leclod]

4 minutes ago, The Strange said:

Its 42.C here in my country, this cannot be satisfied, normally it will operate between 50-54, honestly all I can do is making sure to stay under 54-55.

Well, always have backups of important data and you're fine or switch to ssd

 

Edit : 42° is a lot !

[Alex Atkin UK]

The max operating temperature generally is the maximum they will cover under warranty, expect it to die the day after the warrant expires if you ran it at that.  Other than that, the lower the better.

[LIGISTX]

Google released info years ago stating they saw increased failure of drives over 50c. That was a few years ago at this point tho. 
 

45 drives releases info every quarter about drive health and statistics. They are a great source of info for these types of questions since they have very detailed information and statistical analysis across tens of thousands of drives. I have not looked at their numbers often, but I bet they also saw under 50 is ideal. 
 

That said, 55 won’t kill a drive instantly. A buddy of mine runs a 24 bay NAS and his drives are typically over 55, and they have been fine for 4+ years being on 24/7. 

[BondiBlue]

Realistically you'll be fine unless you have a large stack of drives running next to each other inside a case with no airflow. Personally I would try to keep them under 55°, but even if they do get that hot they're not going to fail instantly. if you're worried then add some airflow. 

[mariushm]

STATISTICALLY,  hard drives have a higher chance of failure the hotter they're working.

You can see Google's hard drive study results for that, Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population : https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf

 

See section 3.4 in that pdf.

 

The colder the drive works, the higher the failure rate... you can see a drives working at 20c have around 6-7% annual failure rate.

The risk of failure goes up once you go above 45c  but not by a significant percentage.  HOWEVER, see next graph

 

 

 

So new drives will have a much higher risk of failure in the first few months if they're kept at very cool temperatures.

BUT if the drive survives the first 3 months or so of 24/7 use or near 24/7 use, then 30c..45c seems to be the optimal temperature for hard drives, until you go over 3 years, when chance of failure goes up significantly if it runs at more than 40c

Basically, if your drive has a 3 year warranty or less, try to keep it at 30c..40c, but up to 45c is fairly safe.

 

Doesn't matter if it's western digital or other brand, the study tested lots of drives from lots of manufacturers.