Internal Hard drive temperature (adjunct to average temperature thread)

[bookworm370]

As to not pollute the stats being connected to the internal temp thread I thought I'd start this one and throw out a softball that I've been thinking about lately.

Posit: The D* design of the x22 series leave far to be desired and has caused concern over HD reliability and heat exhaustion.

Posit: Many different attempts and modifications have been made to the basic design of the box (fans added, brackets added, exhausts, pressurizing, etc.). All of which have their drawbacks in the either sound or physical modification of the box (cutting holes, etc.).

Posit: A hard drive is required to act as function of a DVR/PVR.

Posit: The drives currently use are have industry standard SATA power and data connections.

Question: Why does the main hard drive have to be internal?

Suggestion and discussion:

If the hard drive uses standard connections. Why can't longer SATA and/or power cables (extenders) be used (18" to 24', which would not cause performance issues) to simply remove the drive from the enclosure and put the drive in a fan cooled external enclosure?

I'm not talking e-Sata here but simply an extension of the power and data cables. Theoretically the power can also be supplied by the external enclosure but I'm not sure if the x22(k)s need to see the load on the power bus and or have control of spinup and spindown. If you just took the drive out and replaced with longer cables couldn't you just put it in a small fan cooled enclosure or even use one of the bottom bolt on dual fan units that blow right onto the circuit boards? I've used those coolers and the drives actually get colder than room temperature.

Am I off base here? If you don't need to move your PVR around much then you'd basically be creating a Dual External disk unit. One of which is really the internal disk and the other is the EHD. Would also make it much easier to move the drive over to a Linux PC for 'maintenance'

Discussion?

 

[Smith P.]

Yeah, sure.

Dish is protecting access to the disk by setting [the OEM] disks do not spin-up after power on - that would render attempts to get it out and do some backup of recording or defragmenting or any maintenance, 2nd - they don't to want see the disk accessible outside due possible easy copying a content.

 

[bookworm370]

Agreed on your 2nd point. But if I extend my power and stat cables there is no reason not to move the drive outside the enclosure right? The power and data is still provided by the DVR.

 

[gadgtfreek]

The other thing cooling fans help with is the very hot Broadcom chip. It may be built for high temps, but one has to think the lower you run it the longer itll last..... Maybe not.

Many of the cooling ideas in the other thread cool off the chip, which in turn cools the internal temp.

 

[Smith P.]

First idea ( actually it is manufacturer's responsibility) add a heat-sink to BCM chips (7038/7411/7412) !

That Dish craziness about cheapest devices/services come to absurd. Spare heatsinks, Vandals !