Heat and Hard Drives
The recent spate of hot weather may have been fantastic for sun-worshippers; however, we have seen a phenomenal increase in recovery work as a direct result of overheating computer hardware.
Admittedly, when the temperature is approaching 35 degrees C in your office and you’re wearing a jacket and tie, your priority is likely to be keeping yourself cool and comfortable rather than attending to the comfort of your computers and storage drives.
You should always ensure that your computer is placed in an area where there is a good flow of air. Don’t relegate it to that snug area between your desk and the partition wall. Don’t place your external storage devices on a bookshelf, squeezed between “Marketing Techniques” and “Roget’s Thesaurus” or inside that convenient little cabinet next to your desk.
Heat is the primary cause of failure for hard disks. They need to be nurtured, especially when temperatures reach the levels they did at the end of July.
We’ve had plenty of hard drives in for data recovery in recent weeks – and we’ve taken pictures of some of the resulting damage caused by overheating, and also of an external hard disk that appears to have been constructed with the single purpose of providing a fireworks display.
Laptop drives themselves generate far less heat than their full-size desktop computer counterparts. They are generally quite content running at slightly higher ambient temperatures. However, laptops, and especially the latest models with dual-core CPUs, can themselves run extremely hot. Most of us have seen photographs or video footage of a laptop computer on fire – although this is typically battery failure.
Whilst I cannot confirm the validity of this, apparently a laptop user in the USA successfully sued the manufacturer as the laptop (which she had rested on her lap) burnt her leg. However, having worked on a number of these recent models, I can confirm that they do get incredibly hot.
As a rule, they should only be used on a hard, flat surface – such as a desktop. This allows at least some heat dissipation. Don’t place the laptop on a cushion so you can “see the screen and reach the keyboard more easily” – this is asking for problems.
Whilst the commonest cause for hard drives in general is heat, with laptop drives, as well as heat, there are other issues such as fundamental manufacturing flaws or anomalies. In spite of this, because of the portability of laptop computers, users tend to be unaware of the damage that can be caused to a hard drive by moving the laptop whilst it’s powered on. I’ve witnessed users casually dropping (from only a few centimetres, obviously) their laptops onto a desk, which results in high G-forces and which can adversely affect the hard drive.
Those of you familiar with our stance on external drives – here is a typical scenario.
We were sent an external drive for recovery. It almost certainly failed due to shocking overheating.
This is the storage device, with the cover removed.
There are some glaring problems with this setup.
Firstly, the drives are mounted right next to each other. There are mere millimetres separating them, and millimetres separating the drives and the housing cover.
Secondly, the hard drives they have used are what we would call “of questionable reliability.”
Thirdly, and it gets worse, the drives are configured in a striped array. Also known as RAID 0, if one drive fails, all your data disappears.
Lastly, at the rear of the housing is about the only ventilation in the entire unit. You can see the tiny aperture in this picture:
This minuscule opening would normally be used to house a 40mm fan, which would have to spin at incredibly high speed to cool the interior of the housing. Only in this case, as with so many others, there was no fan installed.
I removed the PCB from one of the drives (unusually, they had both blown; normally with these units, one will blow and the user will quickly power down the unit before the other fails.)
This is the damage to the PCB.
….and here are the scorch marks on the housing.
Bearing in mind these drives have their PCB mounted with the chips facing inward, you can imagine the ferocity of the scorch, having blown straight through the PCB, and the resulting fumes and smoke.
Yet these storage units are marketed as (and I quote directly) “To help you efficiently manage your data, [company name deleted] offers a full line of desktop devices with impressive speed, power and reliability.”
I contacted the manufacturer of this unit. This is how it went:
Retrodata:
“This unit has failed. Both drives have burned logic boards. The reason is that there is inadequate ventilation within the unit. There is no active ventilation cooling the drives. I believe the drive temperatures probably exceeded 75 degrees Centigrade.
I would appreciate it if you could send me two similar hard drives in order that I may try to recover the client’s data.”
Them:
“Thank you for your email and comments, they have been forwarded on to Management. Our [name deleted] range is designed so the casing dissipates heat away form [sic] the mechanism(s). They have been thoroughly tested by our R&D department prior to being put on sale so as to adhere to European and US standards.
We have been selling these 500GB models for over two years and had very few returns for units getting too hot. I believe our overall returns rate is also below the industry standard.
I’m afraid that we cannot supply parts or spare mechanisms for our drives. If the drive is reassembled complete with all parts and undamaged we will happily inspect the unit and as long as nothing is missing or damaged ask our repair centre to repair the unit. Please note that as part of the repair process drives are formatted and in this case the mechanisms would be replaced so any data on it would be lost.”
We have serious issues with their approach. Just because their R&D department test the drives prior to marketing them in order to adhere to European and US standards does not necessarily imply they are of merchantable quality. It is preposterous to assume that the casing dissipates sufficient heat in order to keep the drives cool – especially in high ambient temperatures. Active, real air flow is necessary.
Lastly - accidents do happen…
USB drives. Fantastically useful for all sorts of reasons. But they have a major flaw. They are rather delicate.
I find it amusing that one manufacturer is boasting about one of their models, which will survive being driven over by a car.
Ultimately, though, one of the biggest problems we come across is damage caused by walking into (or swinging a chair into) a USB drive plugged into your computer, snapping the connectors and the area of the PCB to which the connectors are attached. I wonder if the previously-mentioned manufacturers have taken that into account?
This is the result of an unfortunate accident in which someone walked into the USB card whilst it was plugged into a computer’s rear USB port. The PCB snapped, and buckled sufficiently to cause a component to break off.
Repairing these, on the face if it, appears simple; but modern PCBs tend to have more than one layer, and it is more than likely that the traces between the layers were damaged, making it far more complex than a simple soldering job.
If at all possible, try to get yourself a USB card that has the connector separated from the main component by a cable. They are infinitely more resilient to this sort of accident. Alternatively, use a USB extension cable and keep the USB card somewhere safe and out of harm’s way.