Rummy Posted December 19, 2012 Posted December 19, 2012 (edited) Hi all, quick one here for a friend of mine essentially. He's dug out an old computer(about 6-7 years old or so?) which he thought had been put away due to a virus but appears not to be the case after scanning, it was just running quite horribly slow. I had a look(it's quite a nice computer for its time, dell dimension 5150; looks to have been made to be very easily upgradable), and it was so atrocious I couldn't even run IE/load a page/download anything. I booted in linux off a stick to get chrome, speccy and defraggler whilst I was at it, went back into windows to install them. Annoying it kept booting with a resolution not compatible with neither my tv or a monitor I have, so had to keep hard resetting and f8 booting into vga mode. Anyway, EVENTUALLY manage to get started up, install bits and then run defraggler - it reports the disk in in good health and I think the SMART attributes were ok(not sure how to read them properly) but it did say the drive was running at like 60degrees(in yellow), which I thought I've never seen a drive run at. Speccy similarly showed this but showed the temp in red, so I told him it might be the comp's slow because the drives struggling if it's running so hot. Is this a thing that it could be? I've still got the comp and can get the drive out easily, and pop it in the front loading bay of my other comp to see if it does the same there(but haven't had a chance to yet). Interestingly/annoying speccy neither his BIOS seems to give any report of CPU temp; but not once has it cut out so I'm assuming it's ok. Looking at the drive itself the plastic on the bottom has a bit of bubbling in a corner; making me think it's been running quite hot before for a while. tl;dr - How does a hot(50c degrees and up) running drive affect performance? Why would it be running hot? Is there any sort of possible fix? HDD is a WDC1600 SATA Caviar or something I think, 160GB. Edited December 19, 2012 by Rummy
MoogleViper Posted December 19, 2012 Posted December 19, 2012 Temperature does affect performance. Those sort of temperatures can reduce speed to about a third. Not sure why it's hot. Are all the fans blowing properly? Whereabouts is the HDD? Try to make sure it has some decent airflow. To cool it down you could try adding another case fan (remember front/side = intake, rear/top = exhaust), or you could try an HDD cooler. Should be able to pick up either one pretty cheap.
Rummy Posted December 19, 2012 Author Posted December 19, 2012 (edited) It's a bit of a strange setup(not that I've seen many insides myself). It seems to have an intake grill/gap on the front, with a fan that then blows over a rather tall heatsink. The drive is just above this fan, and had specks of dust on it - is it possible for dust to have ingressed into the drive and be causing problems? How would one add any more fans if the case doesn't allow for such? I can't see that properly bar a thumb, though I hope you might be able to(was googled) - that gap at front/left of pic is where air comes in, the black plasticy thing appears to be so that it forces it over the heatsink, which is under the rear part of it. The hard drive sits at the bottom right, inside those blue things. Apparently the black plastic is part of the heatsink. EDIT:Hmm, now I'm doubly confused - is there something that reads the temp of the drive related to the mobo? Speccy on this(my main comp with frontloading sata bay) doesn't actually report temperature of the 160GB drive...or my own main 500GB seagate drive! Anyone know a good way to get accurate read on HDD? Edited December 19, 2012 by Rummy
MoogleViper Posted December 19, 2012 Posted December 19, 2012 The case should have more than one space for a fan. I've never know any with less than 2. But if there aren't any spaces, then you can't add any more, unless you're into case modding. You could always get this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000M11ZDS/ref=asc_df_B000M11ZDS11097887?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&tag=googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B000M11ZDS for £6. You might be able to find one even cheaper. I've not used Speccy, but other programs to monitor HDD temp are http://www.hmonitor.net/ or http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php.
Rummy Posted December 19, 2012 Author Posted December 19, 2012 Yeah just tried SpeedFan, doesn't even detect my HDDs! Interesting looked at my 2TB WD Green, it's got the same 'bubbling' like the other one in places - and I've realised this is metal so it's possibly just issues in manufacture. I might try it in his comp and see if it reports a high running temp, if it does I'm going to just...well, I don't know yet. I'm so perplexed! No I won't don't have another sata cable
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