Ouch, that harddisk is HOT

[Geronimo]

I had to switch to a different tower to accomodate my new motherboard and one thing I happened to notice when I opened it to change a card and brushed one of the harddisks a few minutes after shutting the computer down is that one of the hardisks was literally uncomfortably hot to the touch. I can't imagine this is good for the hard disk but googling about hot hardisks led me mainly to sites offering software to monitor the temperature.

What should I do if I can already surmise that the hardisk has been running too hot? There doesn't seem to be any location in this case for properly mounting hardisks besides the cramped metal box that just barely accomodates the two hardisks. The bottom one didn't heat up much but the top one appears to get hot to the touch everytime. Can a harddisk be safely left unbolted on the floor of the case? it didn't get hot there but I'm certain this form of 'installation' isn't what the designers of the hardsisk would approve of.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[Thue]

You can get a harddisk cooler frame that fits into a 5½inch bay (the bays that also hold your CD drive): http://www.it-nessel.nl/catalog/prod...roducts_id=408

[Whaleboy]

Those are good, I'd go for the passive heatsink designs w/anti-vibration gromits since the fans can be noisy. Having said that, if airflow is a nightmare, it might be worth considering. I'd go for the puller/pusher idea of 2 low speed 120mm fans in the case itself. Cases with that tend to be a little more pricey though and I'd guess you're just looking for a quicker fix?

Unless you're using RAID, or some kind of backup regime, is there any need to have two hard disks when a modern 250Gb is more than enough for most people?

And you're right, heat is very bad for hard disks. It's probably the part of the computer you least want to fail since if something else fails, important data is still retrievable... not if your hdd dies.