Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/06/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> I use a WD external drive in its own enclosure, and I have never opened > the enclosure. From a side vent, it appears that there is a cooling fan of > some kind inside. Do bare drives, connected by the Vantec gadgets, work > ok without cooling? Think about the shelf in your refrigerator that holds butter. First you build a house to keep you away from the cold world, and you heat the house. Then you buy a refrigerator to keep food away from the warm house, and you cool the refrigerator. Then inside the refrigerator there is a place for butter that is warmed to keep it away from the cold refrigerator. Heat is mostly what kills electronics, including hard drives. And butter too, I suppose. If you put the hard drive in an enclosure and you leave it on all of the time, it will last longer if the enclosure contains a fan. If the hard drive is not in an enclosure, then it's not going to get as hot, but I wouldn't use the Vantec bare-drive connector for any hard drive that I was going to leave turned on frequently. I leave an archival hard drive connected overnight while I'm copying to it, and then I turn it on every couple of years to keep the spindle lubrication from seizing up. It doesn't need to be cooled when it's not turned on.