Thread: Extreme Temp Hard Drive Experiences

Originally Posted by nobb

Nah, the morning drive wasnt so bad. The city did a surprisingly good job at clearing all the main roads from the snowstorm.

Where was this? It started snowing Friday morning and they never cleared the road in front of my house in Coral Springs until Sunday night. It was at least 3 feet of snow and there were 2 vehicles stuck in it all weekend, just abandoned. And one was a Jeep. It's normally 4 lanes with 2 going each way but all they did was plow 1 lane and traffic going in both directions used that all weekend including the buses. It was ridiculous, the guy that came to plow my driveway had to turn around and go back to get a shorter blade for his truck because the one he had wouldn't fit down the road between the snow banks.

Originally Posted by nobb

Im surprised you managed to get your normal HDD working though, because none of the standard drives Ive ever used got warm enough during my typical 45 min morning drive to be usable on days like today.

It works every winter without issue now for 3.5 years. Just a regular laptop drive from Memory Express.

Ah, Coral Springs. I used to live around there. Your community lake must be a kickass skating rink at this time of year. Too bad they dont let outsiders in. The NW communities like Kincora and Panorama were pretty much snowed in during the weekend and you couldnt get out unless you have good ground clearance or a nice set of winter tires. But my commute to work downtown (driving + train) didnt change too much because the main roads like Shaganappi and Crowchild were pretty much clear.

If the only problem you are having is with your drive taking too long to spin up, maybe take a look in your BIOS and see if there is a "delay HDD" option, which gives the drive more time to spin up. Or I also wonder if it is possible to write a quick script on a USB key such that when the main drive isnt detected, then the system boots to USB and the USB basically delays the system for x amount of time, then reboots, which by then hopefully the drive will have spun up to speed.

its been cold, and my carputer doesnt boot right away either. im pretty sure its just the motherboard... fans spin up and everything just no post. once it runs that way for a few minutes, it seems the chipset warms up because i flick off power and then back on and its peachy.

im thinking of putting in a 20W lightbulb in there. i have a plug hanging off my truck that is tied to a battery charger. so since i have 120v ac there anyway while the truck is parked, i could add a small heat source to keep the computer compartment warm...

Booyea! Finally a successful boot in -30C with my OCZ Summit and EE25. The trick was to have the OCZ Summit as a boot drive, then install the EE25 externally in a separate enclosure...that way it has more time to spin up. Here's a summary of my experiences:

Via M10000 + Seagate EE25:
No problems with hard drive, but potential timing issues with the M2-Atx. A bit flakey and startup problems start occuring at -25C (not hdd related).

Jetway J7F2WE2G + Seagate EE25 (rugged model):
At about -28C or so, the hard drive takes along time to spin up, which sometimes leads to a failed boot because the mobo doesnt recognize the drive. Oh well, the rugged model of the EE25 is only rated to -20C.

Jetway J7F2WE2G + Seagate EE25 (extreme model, SATA):
-35C was the lowest I managed to test this setup at. Not a single problem ever, works great.

Jetway J7F2WE2G + 60G OCZ Summit (connected to onboard SATA as master boot), Seagate EE25 (extreme model, connected to onboard SATA as slave):
At -15C or below, the system will boot just fine, but since the SSD is detected much faster than the EE25, the EE25 never gets the chance to fully spin up and get detected. As a result, the system boots, but the slave drive is missing until a reboot. Only issue with the OCZ Summit is that below -15C, it's R/W speeds go from 100+ MB/s to about 7MB/s.

Jetway J7F2WE2G + 60G OCZ Summit (connected to onboard SATA as master boot), Seagate EE25 (extreme model, connected externally via USB):
System booted just fine in -30C so far with no issues. However, when there isnt sufficient voltage on the USB going to the drive, it will have trouble spinning up in the cold. This is mostly a problem with the crappy M2-ATX which is only supplying 4.5v. I had to power the 2.5" enclosure with the power pins from THREE USB ports and also had to remove some USB devices to lower the drain on the 5v rail and bring the voltage up to 4.8+. Will have to power my USB hub independently from the 5v rail. Wish I had bought an OPUS. OCZ Summit works just fine, except that once again, it's only operating at 7MB/s because of the cold.

Too bad you weren't in Edmonton yesterday, it was -58!

Haha, edmonton was -59*C including windchill, but the real temperature was -46*C, regardless that is freaking cold. I would've love to see if my vertex would live through that temperature.

edit: so do you still have the stuttering issue nobb?

Damn! Another failed boot on monday (-30). I think my external enclosure (velocity from memex) is the thing that is screwing up. I left the external drive in -30C and when connected to my laptop, it just clicks. Anything above -15C and it works just fine. It is definately not the EE25 drive because Ive used it in colder temps. Gonna pick up another sata enclosure from eBay and see how it goes.

My OCZ Summit has never stuttered. It's just slow in the cold.

Funny to note how much money Ive spent so far from when I first started carpc'ing trying to get things working because of the stupid cold ><

save your money and get a 64gb vertex and call it a day.

So it was -25*C today, so i decided to put the OCZ vertex to some benchmarking.
Here is the result. Not sure how it performs in optimal temperature, but it sure performs pretty good in the cold.

edit: i ran the test with Centrafuse still running, but that shouldn't affect it too much.