Harddrive cooling?

[Negotiator]

I've seen fans for hdd cooling, and I've seen people do their own cooling devices for the drives. However, wouldn't it make more sense to use heatsinks for them as well? CPUs use them, motherboards use them, video cards, RAM - just about every component in the computer. Why not hard drives?
I'm actually planning to use a heatsink from my old Pentium 3 processor for one of my hdd. Saves on noise from the fan, don't have to buy new fans, and also saves 2-3 watts of energy. Provided you have sufficient room in your case, of course. I'm about to get a full tower so the extra Cd-rom bays will be filled with drives+heatsinks. Any comments/suggestions/critique?

[cjpark]

Without decent airflow in your case, heatsinks probably won't help you too much. If you do have decent airflow, you shouldn't really need to worry about extra cooling for your hard drive. How hot is your drive running that you're concerned about providing extra cooling for it?

[Negotiator]

My personal setup doesn't matter. It's the whole idea of using heatsinks instead of fans. Just about every computer case got at least 1 fan, so airflow is not a problem most of the time.

[smilodon]

Well, for heatsinks to be effective, the airflow has to be actually directed so it runs through the increased surface area of the heatsinks and dissipate the heat... Airflow is not usually directed towards the drive bays, but mostly towards the center of the case, in and out to cool the processor & expansion cards... Not sure your heatsinks would be all that effective. But perhaps the hot air convection would be enough to create the required airflow!

Also, there was that Google report stating that hard drives that ran slightly warmer than others failed less frequently or something such. It might be pertinent to you.

[board123]

My drives (see sig) run at 31C and 36C respectively. There's nothing to worry about unless they're over 40C. My drives are in a drive cage with an 80m fan blowing across both of them. The fan helps a lot.