Are SATA HDDs cooler than IDE HDDs?

[videohalp]

My IDE is almost dead. I think it is the heat. Using the freezer trick now. Will SATA HDDs run at lower temperature?

[Hoser Rob]

Not really. The mechanical construction and power consumption will be what makes the difference. If you're looking at a sata drive that was a higher watt rating than the one you have, no.

[jagabo]

Will SATA HDDs run at lower temperature?

The general trend over time has been towards drives that run cooler. Since SATA drives are newer they tend to run cooler than IDE drives. But this has nothing to do with the interface. If both drives are the same generation there will be no significant difference in temperature.

[cal_tony]

What ever drives you have you can always FAN them. I use fans for everything including my external Hard disks. My thought, if it generates heat give it its own fan. My hard disks never get more than just warm to the touch even after re-coding movies over night.

Tony

[hello_hello]

My IDE is almost dead. I think it is the heat. Using the freezer trick now. Will SATA HDDs run at lower temperature?

It probably just reached the end of it's life and has nothing to do with heat. Google released a study on hard drive longevity a few years ago which concluded hard drive operating temperature has basically no effect on a drive's life.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-hard-drives,4347.html

Mind you I have a fan in front of the hard drives in this PC as there's four of them mounted fairly close together (a gap of only a couple of millimetres between them), so they do keep the case warm without one. I have an early model 2TB Hitachi drive though which sits in a hard drive dock, and it's a fairly "warm running" hard drive (newer drives have fewer platters so they probably run a bit cooler). On a hot day it'll get close to 60 degrees according to SpeedFan. I use it as my "downloading" drive so it's been running that way now, reading and writing 24/7, for two or three years. How long a drive lasts is pretty much just luck of the draw.

[redwudz]

I also have a 120mm fan in front of my HDDs and it does make a difference on reported temps. But as hello_hello mentioned, studies such as the Google one didn't find HDD temp much of a factor in failure rates. Most all my HDDs run in the mid 30C range.

The OP didn't mention, or may not know, what temps his failed HDD was running at. From what I've seen, any temp in the 30's C range seems to be OK. Much upward of 40C, probably not good, IMO. Cooler than 30C, OK, but no improvement in longevity, again, IMO.

All HDDs will fail at some point. Not a problem if you don't store anything on them that you can't afford to lose. I just lost a fairly new SSD. Fortunately it was a boot drive and was backed up, so no major problem. Make sure you Backup!

[cal_tony]

I'll go with redwudz. I started using fans when I noticed that hot hard disks slowed down my encodes and caused my external hard disks to give me playback problems when they got hot. My cold hard disks may not last any longer according to Google but I know that they don't have any data errors any more.

Tony