Power consumption and heat dissipation of HDDs

The problem of power consumption and heat dissipation in modern computer components does not need any special substantiations or introductions. It exists and should be somehow dealt with. It's especially critical with the present-day processors and video cards. But the object of this article is another computer element, critical to overheating — hard disk drives (HDD). Manufacturers measure off quite a modest range of operating temperatures — from +5 to +55°C as a rule (occasionally from 0 to +60°C), which is obviously less than in case of processors, video cards, or chipsets.

Moreover, reliability and durability of these drives depends much on their operating temperatures. According to our research, increasing HDD temperature by 5°C has the same effect on reliability as switching from 10% to 100% HDD workload! Each one-degree drop of HDD temperature is equivalent to a 10% increase of HDD service life. Read more at Digit Life