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Screeching fan in Ultra 31310 ext HD enclosure; IBM DTLA 307030 HD info; preferred enclosures.

This one is very popular, although not the latest model. Their designer is nuts. Their LEDs are so bright that just that box alone could light up a room for a small party. Where one for power and one for drive activity would do fine, they have five!

Also, the wire between the PC board and the power connector is about three gauge numbers too heavy, and makes drive installation an imperial PITA (imperial is worse than royal...) They do shave a few mm off the outside dimensions that way.

They put in a cheap fan, and it's notorious for screeching after a while. The oil must be the cheapest available that wont turn into varnish.

Well, surely enough, mine started to screech after a while. Opened it up, noted hot glue (iirc) used to hold the fan in place (Rest of it is not so cheap), peeled off the fan label, saw the end of the shaft and its retaining clip. Gave it a drop or two of Singer sewing machine oil (very good, btw, apparently), and it's been quiet since, although I haven't used it a lot, lately.

The screeching happens when the shaft [rattles] really fast inside the bearing. Make a little circle with thumb and forefinger, and dangle a pun (pen; too nice a typo to fix) or pencil inside it; leave some space. Twirl the writing instrument fast, and as it catches inside the hole you made, it will do a[n] hypocycloidal-style fast wiggle, round and round. (Is there a name for such motion? I don't think it qualifies for nutation.)

Remember the IBM DTLA-307030 HDs with a horrifying failure rate some years ago? The [/.] site had a thread on those at the time. Before I learned about the problem, I bought one; has a bunch of lovely features.

As in tend to do, when I first powered it up, I used one of lovely little switchers with a cable that plugs to the HD power connector. (These are for those USB-to-IDE adapter cables with embedded microprocessors in the IDE shell) It was out in the open, on top of my subwoofer, which eternally-temporarily shares the tabletop with my old Compaq Desqpro.

I made sure I was in contact with the die-cast chassis, and put a finger on the various ICs. One of them got hotter than a one-dollar pistol! I would have burned my finger mildly had I kept it there. ***Apparently, this hot running is normal in this drive!!***

I swore, upon all gods that I respect, that I'd never, ever install this drive without a local breeze blowing past it. I was tempted to install a little cooling fin with thermally-conductive adhesive, but hadn't decided what/where I was going to put the drive.

Small wonder that this drive fails when installed in a dead-air location!

I really do hope I'm wrong, but I think a few IBM engineers really lost it, big time, on this design. If that IC were rated to run at 250 C, may be; I'm sure it is not.

Hokay, Hitachi starts making HDs, IBM's decided to quit that game. They come out with a 60-MB version of that design. Surely, they must have fixed that overheating nonsense? Nope.

=+=+=

I did lots of Web searching, and discovered a company that must be obscure; they seem to either have a death wish, or else have no marketing manager. I insist on cooling fans in my external HD enclosures. Company is AMS Electronics.com, and their trade mark is Venus. They have flattened the cooling scheme about as much as aerodynamics allows, the drive goes in so easily it's like night and day compared to Ultra, the power connector slides easily to accommodate different spacings (and has a clamp screw), etc., et cetera. One two-chip LED is there if you look for it; no party illumination for the not-yet-emotionally-mature who are having fun. (That's OK; just try to grow up before you have serious responsibilities, such as presidency of a nation.)

One other thing: In this enclosure, the guts are all in a drawer-like frame that slides like a drawer, retained by two captive hybrid slotted- or cross-recess ("Phillips") screws. It's great for temporary setups where you don't want your lovely 2 TB drive out where something can catch it or smack it. (Dunno whether it can work with 2 TB, but probably.)

Mine is a model DS-2316, specifically B2BK flavor. Try NewEgg, iirc. Happy with Linux, too. I love it.

--
Nicabod =+= Waltham, Mass.
Reply to
Nicholas Bodley
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I hadn't encountered any IBM HDD failures (since I hadn't owned any until I bought a used laptop), but I think I saw some info stating that Hitachi was manufacturing the IBM drives even when they were labeled as IBM products.

There is a speific term used for that worn condition in bearings, when they start making a low frequency growling noise, but I don't remember the term. I think the chatter or rattle may be a result of the shaft trying to ride around the inner cirumference of the bearing, instead of just rotating on it's axis.

I don't recall seeing any of the small motors (approx 2" or less) that don't fail within a short time, it's just that the cheapest subassemblies are usually always used to increase the profit margain. They make a big deal out of claiming tht the product is fan cooled, though. It will be fan cooled briefly, until it starts making so much noise that I suppose most users disconnect the fan. Let's face it, those small fans don't move much air anyway, certainly not enough to provide an adequate amount of air over and around a HDD for sufficient cooling.

About the overly bright LEDs.. I dislike the distraction of a bright light source just to let me know tht something is powered on. I'm usually fully aware of what equipment I have turned on, particularly when I'm using that equipment. One could add a higher value resistor in series with the LED, but I usually jut put some black tape with a tiny hole in it, or paper label with black ink over the LED.

I think you were referring to a Venus external drive case with a decent cooling fan. I have one of those Venus cases that an hold 4 drives (up to maybe 1.5 TB), and it was a fairly well built accessory. I used it for a while, then packed it to move, and haven't seen it since. Well, that's the primary purpose I wanted it for, to store and protect 4 drives from my previous desktop PCs. It worked smoothly as an external storage device.

-- Cheers, WB .............

Reply to
Wild_Bill

That seems to agree with what I barely remember.

That's what I was trying to describe. The shaft doesn't slip inside the bearing totally, as it normally does; at least partially, it wobbles violently because it doesn't slip. My kitchen exhaust fan also screeches on startup.

I s.t.r. some good small CPU cooling fans that did last a while, but am not sure.

In my Ultra enclosure, not a lot of air moves, but simply replacing the warm air inside the box is better than none. If the drive needs relatively-fast-moving air, indeed, these enclosures are not promising. The Venus is much better, though.

I realized that I don't have anything remotely close to surface-mount soldering equipment right now, and of course the series resistors are s.m.

True, but one for a single drive.

Not at all surprising. I really hope they survive the downturn.

Btw, the fan in the single-drive case is quite thin -- think "pancake", yet it's axial-flow.

Regards,

--
Nicabod =+= Waltham, Mass.
Reply to
Nicholas Bodley

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