PC hardware: Hard Drive Life Expectancy

Reply to: Hard Drive Life Expectancy

Heat is actually pretty dangerous for all components of a computer. Reason being is that they all will produce heat. Not only that, the harddrives like other components have a silicon board with transistors and other electrical components that could easily be harmed by heat.
1. The amount of time your computer is fine, just make sure you have adequate cooling.
2. When a PC is idle its true that it has minimal read and write but in the end it is still spinning, wear and tear will still occur.
3. Downloading and gaming again requires you to have adequate cooling.
4. Leaving your case open is actually BAD for your cooling, here is why.. A computer case is designed to be closed to maximize air flow from teh front to the back of the case. However, because the computer cae is now open the cool air cannot cool the components effectively because it is now escaping from the side. Close the case every time, increase the fans to a higher CFM, or increase the case size. Remember air MUST go from the front to the back. This way you do not have a pocket of hot air hovering over components. If you want to see what I mean then go ahead put a thermometer and compare when it is open and when its closed.
5. This is also a problem, many IDE and SATA drives produce alot of heat, and because of heat transferrance will continue to generate heat. Depending on your case, you have a number of options.
1. Add a 120mm fan to the front near your Harddrives (some cases have this option.. some don't..
2. Get a bigger case... The bigger the case the more drive bays given (in most cases) you can split them up.
3. Use only the drive you need and use a harddrive enclosure for the rest of them.
6. Discharging yourself against the case is fine, you really don't have to worry about static.

Concluding from your facts, I would say the main problem is that your harddrives are too close together and the case is open. Again, the case has to be closed for the fans in the computer to be effective... cool air is sucked in from the front(or the side if you have a side panel fan) and jetted through the power supply and rear fans. I was looking at one of the responses in adding a 10 dollar fan. Yes, It can work, only if you're careful though, when you accelerate the fan to such a high cfm and no filters you can get a dust collection on your motherboard, which with high humidity will cake onto your board making things even worse. So, keep your case closed, try and split the drives, and increase the airflow in the case (tip: increase the air flow going out the back of your computer, it will help remove all the hot air faster).

Hope that helps!

Chris T.