B3 heating even if not ON.

[flimflam]

I made remarkable finding...

Iven if my B3 is turned off but connected to the router ( diodes on LAN socket are flashing ) it heats... strange not? It is notable warmer than my hands. And I had 36.5 °C at this time
When I turned it on ..... it shows 47 °C

Other my similar device is absolutely cold.

But it is pity that B3 does not support WOL ( wake on lan ).... Even if the power consumption is really low )

[Cheeseboy]

The only way to truly "turn it off" is to pull the power plug after you have shut it down.

[Ubi]

still if the machine is turned off via the web interface (which I assume has happened) the disk should be parked right? And the mobo isn't able to heat the entire body 10deg over ambient. So it is a little strange.

If however the b3 was shutdown via command line the drive will indeed remain on, and you can expect some heating.

[flimflam]

When I changed original 1TB WD Green to 3TB my colleague advice me to take in count heating of the device. By copying of all stuff from three discs to " the new one " it was quite hot. When I opened the original box there have been two heat labels from each side of HDD, and two small pieces on the front of the disc. The adhesive part of the tape is covered with foil so i do not see the sense of heat convection. So i rebuild whole box into new with active fan. To avoid noise from fan i decided to install potentiometer on fan. Now with 1/4 of max. rotation speed is noise the same as before and HDD does not exceed 35 degrees Celsius. To achieve this i also installed two passive coolers on each side of HDD.

I got an idea to use beeper inside to warn if the heat of the HDD exceed for example 40 degrees. Now is the Autumn time and also inner temp is not as high. During summer we have 35 deg. in interiors so some adjusting of fan speed would be needed.

If here in the forum is someone who can write small script to warn by overheating with beep and highest temp of the disc would be adjustable....this would be perfect. At least for me

[Cheeseboy]

still if the machine is turned off via the web interface (which I assume has happened) the disk should be parked right? And the mobo isn't able to heat the entire body 10deg over ambient. So it is a little strange.
If however the b3 was shutdown via command line the drive will indeed remain on, and you can expect some heating.

The mobo makes quite a bit of difference.

Code: Select all

$ sudo hddtemp /dev/sda /dev/sdc /dev/sdc /dev/sde
/dev/sda: WDC WD30EZRX-00DC0B0: 46°C
/dev/sdc: WDC WD30EZRX-00DC0B0: 41°C
/dev/sdc: WDC WD30EZRX-00DC0B0: 41°C
/dev/sde: WDC WD30EZRX-00DC0B0: 38°C

The one with the actual B3 in it has extra space and air around it, otherwise the disk temperature is constantly 10 degrees C warmer than the other units.

@flimflam:
Are you sure you want the tiny buzzer to go off if the temperature goes up a little?
Have you read the spec sheet of the disk? It can take quite a bit.
Wouldn't it be better to install smartmontools and have smartd email you if something bad was about to happen (not only with the temperature)? It is in the repository, but the one I have installed I must have compiled myself, probably because the latest disks weren't in the database in the version from the repository...

Cheers,

/Cheeseboy

[Ubi]

The mobo makes quite a bit of difference.

Ah. Maybe my previous answer was a bit unclear. The original question was about a B3 that was turned off. In that case the HD should not be producing any heat and all thats left is the mobo to account for the high temperature. I agree that the presence of a mobo can influence the heat problem of a spinning drive, but that was not the original topic of this thread.

[johannes]

When I opened the original box there have been two heat labels from each side of HDD, and two small pieces on the front of the disc. The adhesive part of the tape is covered with foil so i do not see the sense of heat convection. "

Just a short comment, the heat pads do make a whole lot of difference, they are just slightly in touch with the disk but they drastically lower the disk temperature compared to not having them. The foil does not at all stop heat convection.

[Cheeseboy]

The mobo makes quite a bit of difference.

Ah. Maybe my previous answer was a bit unclear. The original question was about a B3 that was turned off. In that case the HD should not be producing any heat and all thats left is the mobo to account for the high temperature. I agree that the presence of a mobo can influence the heat problem of a spinning drive, but that was not the original topic of this thread.

You are probably right. Perhaps it just spins it down but still feeds power to the disk?
I would have to dismantle my B3 and a SATA power cable to allow me to measure any current passing through it to be sure (allowing me to put my multimeter in serial with each of the leads of the SATA power cable to know for sure). Which sounds like something I would actually enjoy doing- but not on a working day...

[flimflam]

@ johannes - sorry that i doubted about heat pads function

@ Cheeseboy - smartmontools could be a good idea, i will think about it. The point was "I hear the beep sound I turn fan speed to be higher" but for sure some of my neighbors may be little bit nervous after two hrs of beeping

[Cheeseboy]

@ Cheeseboy - smartmontools could be a good idea, i will think about it. The point was "I hear the beep sound I turn fan speed to be higher" but for sure some of my neighbors may be little bit nervous after two hrs of beeping

The beep is such a tiny noise anyway, it probably wouldn't wake you up if you were sleeping in the next room.
If you want to do it like that, why not make the B3 itself control the fan speed? Sounds like a much more interesting project!

[Ubi]

Perhaps it just spins it down but still feeds power to the disk?

The disk is not a heating element. The heat comes from inefficent power use of the spindle engine. If there is no spinning, there is no heat, no matter how much volt you apply to it. So yeah, the current reading of the B3 would be really interesting indeed =)

[Cheeseboy]

Are you sure?
There is plenty of built-in logic in them-there newfangled SATA disks.
Surely it has a CPU and other bits that will produce heat when powered on?

[Gordon]

Sorry to barge in, but I vaguely remember a post from a while back that stated that the B3 used more power when shut down than with the harddisk in idle state. That would without question account for the heat build up being mentioned in the top posting.

However weird that may be doesn't change the fact though that the design of the B3 will always make it consume power when connected. It is essentially always on, even if it is not running the Bubba OS. The one way to really shut it down is to cut the power, as stated by Ubi here above. One way to control that is by using one of those cheap remote controlled ARC or AC type plug-in switches (Nexa, Klik-aan-klik-uit, Ikea etc.) - these switches are usually sold with a handheld tansmitter but the system can be extended with timers. Using a Tellstick or Rfxcom 433MHz transmitter you can also control these devices from a computer, which is essentially just as good as Wake-on-LAN.

[Cheeseboy]

Excellent idea!

The problem is:
What do you do when you want your B3 to control the transmitter to the remote relays?
It cannot turn itself on, it cannot be turned on with WOL...
If I could afford a more expensive USP, or perhaps even a remotely controllable UDP I might be in business... But how am I going to connect to either with my B3 down? I'd have to buy another one to control the first one
I used to use the B3 and a Tellstick to turn the B2 on when it still lived at home and was only used occasionally...

[johannes]

Sorry to barge in, but I vaguely remember a post from a while back that stated that the B3 used more power when shut down than with the hard disk in idle state. That would without question account for the heat build up being mentioned in the top posting.

Yes, I can confirm this, we have a bug (or lack of feature) which causes the CPU to use more power when the B3 is shut down compared to when running and idle. It has a fully logical technical explanation (B3 shut down = uBoot idling, waiting for button press, and since interrupts for kirkwood don't work properly in uboot this is a busy-loop it does not use CPU sleep but just spins..) but it's not very nice, I agree. The B3 in total of course uses less than when on (due to disk spin-down) but the CPU could of course also be cooler. Note that I am not defending this enormously embarrassing bug, it's just that we found out quite recently, and have not been able to fix it, turned out to be difficult.

I also remember an old thread discussing this, but can't find it right now.