Hard drive and Heat

[Nimbus]

Ok, I know this was probably addressed before, but the forum is pretty slow, so I thought I would ask anyway. From what I am reading, the hard drive is the source of the LEG BURNING HEAT that comes out the bottom of my laptop (220a). Has changing drives helped anyone with heat troubles?? I have literally got red patches on my left palm from slow cooking of my hand!!. I thought fixing my speed step (see old post) would have fixed this , but no. My laptop has never shut down on its own, so I guess it still functions with this heat, but it cant be good on that hard drive, if that is the trouble. Please let me know, thanks

[questionlp]

5400RPM laptop hard drives (as well as the newer 7200RPM drives) do produce quite a bit of heat. I upgraded the hard drive that was in my ThinkPad T21 (20GB 4200RPM) to a 40GB 5400RPM and the amount of heat has definitely gone up... but not to the point to where it becomes uncomfortable.

One option is to maybe get some type of pad to put between the laptop and you while providing a little bit of breathing room for ventilation... or worse-case, get a hard drive that spins slower. The latter will obviously reduce performance; but on the bright side, it will also reduce heat output and reduce power consumption.

HTH

[flecrone]

I put a 60GB 7200 rpm hard drive in my 200A5. Rumor has it that newer drives run cooler despite the higher speed. The drive that came with the 200A5 is 4200 rpm, the 220A5 is most likely the same.

I usually use a cooling pad because overall I think it's better for the computer to be cooled. The new drive may run slightly cooler than the old drive, but there is not a drastic difference. Thanks to the liquid bearings, it is MUCH quieter, almost silent.

HOWEVER, due to IDE limitations in the 200A5, there is not much difference in data transfer rates between the two drives, which was disappointing. If I were to upgrade again, I'd go with the 80GB 4200 rpm drive to get more space for the same money.

[Madgenius]

I upgraded to a 60 5400rpm toshiba and get less heat than before and drastic improvement over the stock HD.

Heat above and under the left palm rest is the HD heat in the back (under the keyboard left side) is the processor. try not blocking the fan vents on th bottom of the system this is most likely the issue. My system only runs hot under intense tasks like rendering, in those cases I don't leave it sitting on my lap.

[msgoodygal]

I recently was reading this forum, and was looking for info on the heat situation for my a200 laptop. It was so bad, I couldn't stand for it to be sitting on my lap. I didn't figure my laptop would last too long due to the extreme heat. So, I did what was recommended on this forum - I went out and bought a laptop cooler stand.

The brand that I bought at CompUSA was a Targus, sold for $29.99. I liked it over the others because it had very small rubber risers on the rear of it to allow for air circulation, and it has two fans. It's powered by USB. When I first put it on, I had doubts that it would do it's job because the fans didn't seem to have that much juice.

I turned my laptop on about 3:30 in the afternoon to watch a movie, and then got busy before it finished. I paused my movie and went to do some things, but never got back to it, and fell asleep leaving my laptop on ALL NIGHT. At 6:00 am the next morning, I went RUSHING to my laptop to see how it made it after being on over 12 hours straight.

I was totally SHOCKED to find my laptop very cool, not even mildly warm! I know that part of this is due to the fact it entered standby and power save mode, but I feel confident that this little laptop cooling stand did it's job better than I ever dreamed it would!

Well, I advise everyone with one of these laptops to spend the money on a cooler. Doesn't have to be the brand that I bought, but it's a good investment in the laptop.

Linda

[Nimbus]

What about this cooler while running on batteries, How hard does it hit running time?