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  1. #1

    Limestone networks - no cooling for hard drives?

    Few days ago I purchased new server from Mainstream networks which is reseller of LimeStone networks.
    The server deal was really amazing, all is good - price and hardware quality and support response all good. Except of one very important detail - in my server hard drive is overheaten.

    I checked this by using smartd as I do for all my servers.
    It have parameter Temperature_Celsius and on my new server with new hard drive this parameter is equal to 51 degrees of celsius when server is inactive and it is jumping to 54 when I execute some tests.
    I contacted their support - which really was fast to answer me that they did checked their 67 servers and all of them have hard drives temperature in same range! And also they answered that have nothing to do with this fact and some of their servers are working long time more then one year with such overheat of hard drives....

    After this I searched WHT and found this thread http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=903296 - telling that mainstream networks itself had hard drive failure few months ago - which now I understand why it was happened!

    So now I have big wonder and big question - what to do now?
    May be I am wrong when I am worry so much about hard drive overheat? May other Limestone network customers will share their experience with their hard drives temperatures?

    I really suspect that they simply trying to cut prices by not using coolers - which is quite normal - on regular pc, hard drive will have such temperature in case you will not put few normal coolers into computer.
    So I want to open this topic with a public question to other Limestone customers and stuff - what is their experience with cooling of their server hard drives?

  2. #2
    Just to clarify we had a hard drive failure on our old server at a different data center. We use multiple data centers for our personal use and we did check those and they were around the same temp as yours is.
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  3. #3
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    Most drives I think are rated at around 55 deg Celsius to probably 60 max.

    Keep in mind this is a server environment and not a desktop enviornment. Makes a huge difference when you're shoving everything in a 1U form than a midtower. If you're worried what I would do is use something to backup the contents of the drive like offsite (r1soft or rsync for example) and that way you're prepared if it does happen to topple but I think it should be fine.
    Nothing here right now.

  4. #4
    From LSN

    Here is the manufactures page on the drive specifications:
    http://www.wdc.com/en/PRODUCTS/products.asp?driveid=487
    Temperature (Metric)
    Operating -0° C to 60° C
    Non-operating -40° C to 70° C
    If the drive is running in the 50-55deg then that is normal. As long as the HDD stays under the 60deg mark there should be no issues.
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  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by mainstreamnet View Post
    From LSN

    Here is the manufactures page on the drive specifications:
    http://www.wdc.com/en/PRODUCTS/products.asp?driveid=487
    Temperature (Metric)
    Operating -0° C to 60° C
    Non-operating -40° C to 70° C
    If the drive is running in the 50-55deg then that is normal. As long as the HDD stays under the 60deg mark there should be no issues.
    According to my and many other people experience - is that normal healthy hard drive temperature is in range of 30°-40°
    If disk temperature is raising it became in danger of failure and loss of data. And it is normal practic to put coolers into pc that will do the proper job of cooling the hard drive.

    You can see yourself that top operational temperature for such disks is 60° - which is very close to my drive temperature and it may overheat soon to this value like the previous disk which I had - which had 61° temperature even when it was not active but it was old about 6.5 months. So I can approximate that even new disk will wait same story - especially in such kind of websites which I am going to put there - which will cause for extensive amount of load on harddrive!

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Matt - HostMist View Post
    Most drives I think are rated at around 55 deg Celsius to probably 60 max.

    Keep in mind this is a server environment and not a desktop enviornment. Makes a huge difference when you're shoving everything in a 1U form than a midtower. If you're worried what I would do is use something to backup the contents of the drive like offsite (r1soft or rsync for example) and that way you're prepared if it does happen to topple but I think it should be fine.
    I've had and have servers in few datacenters but no where I never seen such so high disks temperatures! Ok, I can assume that it may be caused by using some special 1U servers, but this still make no difference - if disk will fail it will loose all data no matter of what size was this server...

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by yaax View Post
    I've had and have servers in few datacenters but no where I never seen such so high disks temperatures! Ok, I can assume that it may be caused by using some special 1U servers, but this still make no difference - if disk will fail it will loose all data no matter of what size was this server...
    It won't fail that easily, WD black edition drives are built to withstand more heat than an average drive (hence why they cost a lot more).

    I don't think you have much to worry about especially since Limestone has been around for what seems like forever?
    Nothing here right now.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matt - HostMist View Post
    Most drives I think are rated at around 55 deg Celsius to probably 60 max.

    Keep in mind this is a server environment and not a desktop enviornment. Makes a huge difference when you're shoving everything in a 1U form than a midtower.

    It's not just the fact that it's in 1U form. A lot of facilities use half depth (14") 1U servers where the server builder is forced to cram the components together. Air flow is naturally poor as a result.

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  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Matt - HostMist View Post
    It won't fail that easily, WD black edition drives are built to withstand more heat than an average drive (hence why they cost a lot more).

    I don't think you have much to worry about especially since Limestone has been around for what seems like forever?
    Thats was my question - may be some of other people had used servers with similar hard drives with similar overheat temperatures - how much time their drives worked properly without failure?

  10. #10
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    My hard drives on my Softlayer server are at 23C and 22C.
    CPU is around 30C
    Even my home CPU an overclocked Q6600 is only running at 49C....

    Seems pretty bad that their HHD's run so hot.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by yaax View Post
    According to my and many other people experience
    Your experience maybe, but "other people experience" is not a valid reference unless you cite some reputable sources which reflect your statement. And it is easy to see why you didn't cite any sources...other people's experience is the opposite of what you are saying.

    Google, who likely maintains more spindles than any other single entity in the world, has released internal studies showing that failure rate is not directly attributed to operating temperature. Even the drive manufacturer does not agree with you as the drive is within its normal operating range.

    http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf
    http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20...-once-thought/

    That said, the higher end setups with dual xeons and RE3 drives at LSN also have much more drive cooling to support the additional hard drive capacity. If the temperatures concern you, you may want to consider looking at one of the higher end setups.. then you will see operating temps in the 30-40c range.
    Last edited by prologan; 11-15-2009 at 06:41 PM.

  12. #12
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    Dont worry about the overheat..just ensure that you have enough redundancy like raid1,r1soft for your drives.

    Quote Originally Posted by yaax View Post
    May be I am wrong when I am worry so much about hard drive overheat?
    Last edited by ZenMonk; 11-16-2009 at 04:24 AM.
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  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by prologan View Post
    Your experience maybe, but "other people experience" is not a valid reference unless you cite some reputable sources which reflect your statement. And it is easy to see why you didn't cite any sources...other people's experience is the opposite of what you are saying.

    Google, who likely maintains more spindles than any other single entity in the world, has released internal studies showing that failure rate is not directly attributed to operating temperature. Even the drive manufacturer does not agree with you as the drive is within its normal operating range.

    http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf
    http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20...-once-thought/

    That said, the higher end setups with dual xeons and RE3 drives at LSN also have much more drive cooling to support the additional hard drive capacity. If the temperatures concern you, you may want to consider looking at one of the higher end setups.. then you will see operating temps in the 30-40c range.
    If you will check curefully google report, you will see that they even did not checked such disks where temperature is higher then 51 celsius degrees - and on my server disk temperature - started from 51 and growed to 54. And even for disks in their report, they see that risks of failure are increasing with major growth of operating temperature. Indeed on lower temperatures values from 35-45 risk of failure is lowest and after temperature growth more then 48 or failing less then 30 - then failure rates starting to grow.

  14. #14
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    Is this really something to cry over ?

    As long as it works, who cares how or why.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Bjørn-Erik Hansen View Post
    Is this really something to cry over ?

    As long as it works, who cares how or why.
    If hard drive will fail, it will be too late to cry as it will cause big money loss. So it is much better to cry now - before problem occured. And I even not crying right now, I am just asking a question.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matt - HostMist View Post
    If you're worried what I would do is use something to backup the contents of the drive like offsite (r1soft or rsync for example) and that way you're prepared if it does happen to topple but I think it should be fine.
    Perhaps this ?

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Bjørn-Erik Hansen View Post
    Perhaps this ?
    Backup is another concern. It is always good to have backup, even when disks are working perfect.
    But even if you have backup, if you see that some hard dirve going to fail soon - will you not be worried?

  18. #18
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    How do you know the hard drive will fail ?

    The servers we have here at work, the HD is around your level of heat, and we've not had a single failure in over 2 years so far.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Bjørn-Erik Hansen View Post
    How do you know the hard drive will fail ?

    The servers we have here at work, the HD is around your level of heat, and we've not had a single failure in over 2 years so far.
    This was my question - will drive fail or not. Ok now I see your answer, but can you please specify more details - what are temperatures of your drives and how many drives you have with such temperatures?

  20. #20
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    I'll check them next time I'm doing something at our farm.

    Don't recall any specific HD details on the go.

  21. #21
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    is the temperature value reported in smart accurate? does it update by itself all the time or just update when you execute smart test?

  22. #22
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    one of the drives in my home pc sits at about 60 degrees near enough permanently purely becasue it is sandwitched between other drives (6 hard drives in this pc at the moment) and its be running for coming up for 3 years now, one of my servers sites about 55 constantly also and its also fine

  23. #23
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    They own the drives. If the heat was a problem that was going to cause imminent failure, don't you think they'd want to fix it to save their drive? They're out too when hard drives die, they have to replace it, and possibly deal with an angry customer.

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