Lowest temperature for hard drives?

[tacotime]

My rigs are outside here.  Right now it's -24C outside and my rig's hard drive is running at 16C (my CPU amazingly is at 12C).

My question whether or not the hard drive will stop working below a certain temperature?  It's get into -40 to -50C here and it's possible that the HDD temperature will go below 0C.

Also at what temperature do brushless fans (on the video cards/CPU) generally stop working?

[deepceleron]

I just looked up a Deskstar datasheet, and it specifies 5C to 60C operating, -40 to 70C non-operating. WD Caviar is 0-60C operating. Looks like it would be best to not freeze your hard drive.

It sounds like if the fans stop working, that would actually be what you want to keep the system warm...

[crazyates]

Holy crap where do you live?!

We had a trick for recovering data from old hard drives with wheel bearings (which aren't in use anymore, most spinners now use some sort of fluid bearing) where if the bearing had frozen, sometimes we could put them in the freezer overnight. Get them down -10 or 0C, and plug them in really quick and see if we could read the drive. 16C for a hard drive is fine, but i'm not sure about continuously running the drive below freezing.

[tacotime]

I'm in North Alberta

Okay, thanks.  I guess I'll have to wrap some kind of insulating material around it to keep it warm.  Hopefully the motherboard won't cold bug at those temps either (right now the northbridge is 30C and the memory is 12C).

[bcpokey]

I'm in North Alberta

Okay, thanks.  I guess I'll have to wrap some kind of insulating material around it to keep it warm.  Hopefully the motherboard won't cold bug at those temps either (right now the northbridge is 30C and the memory is 12C).

That's ri-dicu-cold. Why not take your rigs inside to help heat your home?

Interestingly, it's actually a pretty good idea to insulate your drives to keep them a bit warmer:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Drives between 15-30C fail at a higher rate than 30-40C almost across the board.

[crazyates]

I'm in North Alberta

Okay, thanks.  I guess I'll have to wrap some kind of insulating material around it to keep it warm.  Hopefully the motherboard won't cold bug at those temps either (right now the northbridge is 30C and the memory is 12C).

That's ri-dicu-cold. Why not take your rigs inside to help heat your home?

Interestingly, it's actually a pretty good idea to insulate your drives to keep them a bit warmer:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Drives between 15-30C fail at a higher rate than 30-40C almost across the board.

Interesting article. It might seem that way at first, but look at the temp vs time graph. Seems that if a lower temp drive is going to fail, it's going to be in the first 3 months. Between 6 months and 2 years, the failure rates are about the same, and beyond 2 years, it's actually a lower failure rate.

[hardcore-fs]

I just looked up a Deskstar datasheet, and it specifies 5C to 60C operating, -40 to 70C non-operating. WD Caviar is 0-60C operating. Looks like it would be best to not freeze your hard drive.

It sounds like if the fans stop working, that would actually be what you want to keep the system warm...

The issue will be getting your data back off...........

Consider that:
1. These devices are mechanical.... simple physics states that materials  expand and contract with temperature.
It means that as the temperature falls/rises. the tolerance of the mechanics may go out, you may record data on disk surfaces that have contracted/ with disk arms that are smaller, bearings that are tighter. When the mechanics return to the "correct" size it IS a problem.

2. Materials generally lag tracking the ambient temperature, which means that the drive will be colder than its surroundings when it get warmer, so a shit load of water may condense out on the electronics/inside the drives.

[Digigami]

Mining rigs.. why have a HD at all? Boot off a USB and you won't have anything to worry about..

Where abouts in AB? Edmonton over here.. but I keep my rigs inside still, helps keep the gas bill low

[bcpokey]

I'm in North Alberta

Okay, thanks.  I guess I'll have to wrap some kind of insulating material around it to keep it warm.  Hopefully the motherboard won't cold bug at those temps either (right now the northbridge is 30C and the memory is 12C).

That's ri-dicu-cold. Why not take your rigs inside to help heat your home?

Interestingly, it's actually a pretty good idea to insulate your drives to keep them a bit warmer:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Drives between 15-30C fail at a higher rate than 30-40C almost across the board.

Interesting article. It might seem that way at first, but look at the temp vs time graph. Seems that if a lower temp drive is going to fail, it's going to be in the first 3 months. Between 6 months and 2 years, the failure rates are about the same, and beyond 2 years, it's actually a lower failure rate.

Well, across the board, if a drive is going to fail, it is most likely to do so within the first 3 months, it is simply the most likely to do so in colder climates. [3months, 2years) all drive failure rates drop significantly, while cold climates remain the most likely to fail.
To quote:

We can conclude that at moderate temperature ranges it is likely that there are other effects which affect failure rates much more strongly than temperatures do.

Which suggests that at the extremes (Cold and Hot) you do in fact correlate temperature to increasing failure rates, perhaps for mechanical reasons such as hardcore-fs lists. Therefore it does seem wise to attempt to keep drives operating at more reasonable temperatures, and insulating at extreme cold temps like -24C is very highly suggestible.

[Zeek_W]

Holy crap where do you live?!

We had a trick for recovering data from old hard drives with wheel bearings (which aren't in use anymore, most spinners now use some sort of fluid bearing) where if the bearing had frozen, sometimes we could put them in the freezer overnight. Get them down -10 or 0C, and plug them in really quick and see if we could read the drive. 16C for a hard drive is fine, but i'm not sure about continuously running the drive below freezing.

Still works. Just did it on a dropped laptop harddrive a week ago. Vacuum Baggy,some glue to seal air out, long power/sata cables running outta the freezer and the data was all brought back

[crazyates]

Holy crap where do you live?!

We had a trick for recovering data from old hard drives with wheel bearings (which aren't in use anymore, most spinners now use some sort of fluid bearing) where if the bearing had frozen, sometimes we could put them in the freezer overnight. Get them down -10 or 0C, and plug them in really quick and see if we could read the drive. 16C for a hard drive is fine, but i'm not sure about continuously running the drive below freezing.

Still works. Just did it on a dropped laptop harddrive a week ago. Vacuum Baggy,some glue to seal air out, long power/sata cables running outta the freezer and the data was all brought back

See my sig. You were very lucky then.

[tacotime]

kk, I think I'll put it in a static protected bag and then wrap it in a bunch of bubble wrap, which is pretty insulating.  Then I'll see how that works and if it can bring the temps back into the 20s.

[DeathAndTaxes]

why not run your rig from a usb drive (or SSD if you need the capacity although I can't see why)?  No moving parts means it really shouldn't care hold cold it gets (within reason).

[BR0KK]

There was a gy that tested a Harddrive on LN2 .... Cant find the link ...

But i found something else: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2393390,00.asp

[crazyates]

There was a gy that tested a Harddrive on LN2 .... Cant find the link ...

But i found something else: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2393390,00.asp

That's an SSD. Of course it's going to have no issues below freezing. The main issue with a spinning hard drive is the bearings.

[BR0KK]

Oh SSD should work...

found something different:

http://www.google.de/imgres?hl=de&safe=off&client=safari&sa=X&tbo=d&rls=en&biw=1426&bih=840&tbm=isch&tbnid=0XdsYthZHx17UM:&imgrefurl=http://hacknmod.com/hack/how-to-recover-dead-hard-drive-data/&docid=iMSE_MaCuwpwsM&imgurl=http://www.hacknmod.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/hard-drive.jpg&w=320&h=240&ei=gk61UKzCOc3bsgbG8ICICw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=383&sig=106743804277992879291&page=1&tbnh=137&tbnw=190&start=0&ndsp=36&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0,i:100&tx=101&ty=82

http://www.google.de/imgres?hl=de&safe=off&client=safari&tbo=d&rls=en&biw=1426&bih=840&tbm=isch&tbnid=g_DdxDrspWrAsM:&imgrefurl=http://www.jimwilliamson.net/misc/2003-07-30-cold-hard-drive/index.htm&docid=QnHhlqw3gW6PvM&imgurl=http://www.jimwilliamson.net/misc/2003-07-30-cold-hard-drive/5.jpg&w=405&h=202&ei=xU61UMmDIY7Mswby64GgDA&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=165&sig=106743804277992879291&page=1&tbnh=141&tbnw=282&start=0&ndsp=35&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:88&tx=60&ty=65


And i saw someone on xtremsystems (cooling with LN2 or dry ice) supercool their hard drive... What didn't went to good

[Zeek_W]

Holy crap where do you live?!

We had a trick for recovering data from old hard drives with wheel bearings (which aren't in use anymore, most spinners now use some sort of fluid bearing) where if the bearing had frozen, sometimes we could put them in the freezer overnight. Get them down -10 or 0C, and plug them in really quick and see if we could read the drive. 16C for a hard drive is fine, but i'm not sure about continuously running the drive below freezing.

Still works. Just did it on a dropped laptop harddrive a week ago. Vacuum Baggy,some glue to seal air out, long power/sata cables running outta the freezer and the data was all brought back

See my sig. You were very lucky then.

HAHA - didn't even notice. Must of been an older hard drive in that laptop.

[deepceleron]

kk, I think I'll put it in a static protected bag and then wrap it in a bunch of bubble wrap, which is pretty insulating.  Then I'll see how that works and if it can bring the temps back into the 20s.

Static bag = conductive. Not a good idea.

[tacotime]

Just bubble wrap then?

Edit: cardboard is r4, so I guess I'll make a little cardboard tomb for it.

[tacotime]

welp, I fixed this without insulation by adjusting the position of my cards so that they blew on the hard drive.  Now it's -22C out and the HDD is at 27C and the cards are chugging away in the 50's.