Is a hard drive fan necessary?

Hey there,

I have a built-in hard-disk fan in the front part of my PC case, cooling two separate hard drives, one 0.5 TB and the other 2 TB. But it tends to make a lot of noise when I don't clean it for a month or so, so I was wondering if I could just unplug it without encountering any problems with hard-drive temperatures. What do you say?

Thanks.

Depends on how much air flow you have in your case. If you have any intake fans at the front, then HDD fans are probably not necessary as they'll more than likely get sufficient air cooling them from the intake. Of course that depends on whether your drives are behind the intake fan!

Depends on how much air flow you have in your case. If you have any intake fans at the front, then HDD fans are probably not necessary as they'll more than likely get sufficient air cooling them from the intake. Of course that depends on whether your drives are behind the intake fan!

GarGx1

Thanks, but I think that what I refer to as the HD fan is actually the intake fan you are talking about. The fan is not directly above or below the drives; the fan is located vertically by the front panel behind some air-flow grills. So, then, is this intake fan necessary?

It wouldn't make a huge difference to your hard drives if you unplugged that fan. The thing about the intake fan is, it will produce better cooling throughout your entire PC so if you do end up unplugging it, the rest of the components in your PC might have a temperature rise. Is it a big deal cleaning it once every few weeks? Buy a dust filter if you don't have one and that should keep your fan nice and clean. You would still have to clean out the dust filter though.

It's not a hard drive fan, it's an intake fan. It's quite important for temperatures so i wouldn't remove it.

If it's noisy you could buy a better fan that will be cheaper, and if it's bringing in a lot of dust you could buy a dust filter.

Thanks for the replies. The fan by itself is not noisy, but starts making quite annoying buzzing noises when it gets dusty. When it goes uncleaned for a long time it produces almost industrial-level noise.

When I should make plain is that it is not the only intake fan on the case. The case is a Thermaltake Shark and it has a big intake fan in the back that is responsible for most of the air flow and cooling for most of the components. The other fan in the front that is producing the noise is small and seems to be only serving the hard drive area.

Thanks for the replies. The fan by itself is not noisy, but starts making quite annoying buzzing noises when it gets dusty. When it goes uncleaned for a long time it produces almost industrial-level noise.

When I should make plain is that it is not the only intake fan on the case. The case is a Thermaltake Shark and it has a big intake fan in the back that is responsible for most of the air flow and cooling for most of the components. The other fan in the front that is producing the noise is small and seems to be only serving the hard drive area.

Athawolfus

I've personally never had a HDD fail due to heat. Nor, have I seen a PC HDD Fail from heat Period...

If there's that much heat generating in your computer case thats causing a HDD to fail, then I'd imagine your CPU, and MOBO are going to fail much sooner.

HDDScan or CPUID Monitor can show u temps on your hard drives.... unless they are like over 65C all the time, i wouldnt bother cooling them.

Hard drives can die from heat though, i had a couple old raptors which died within a year or so... but the new 2.5inch laptop sized raptors fixed the heat problem.

Thanks for the suggestions. The temperature of the HDs is around 30C. Maybe I'll check again after unplugging the fan or just buy a new fan.

By the way, what are safe peak temperatures for the CPU? (mine is an E8400)

Thanks for the suggestions. The temperature of the HDs is around 30C. Maybe I'll check again after unplugging the fan or just buy a new fan.

By the way, what are safe peak temperatures for the CPU? (mine is an E8400)

Athawolfus