Extreme Cold - Page 2

Punky · 08-19-2009, 10:11 PM

i'm sorry but i wouldn't recommend the wool idea. Even if its cold outside, your pc will eventually warm up, with the wool in place it will probably overheat very quickly.

it is possible to use a microcontroller + sensors + heater and some simple coding to keep your HD warm, but this will constantly eat up your battery and will drain it, but i guess you can also monitor the voltage and turn off accordingly.

is it worth the trouble? depends on u.

nobb · 08-20-2009, 01:38 AM

Wool sounds like a fire hazard. When it's -50C outside, no matter how much wool you have, after your car has been sitting for a while everything will still be at -50C. From my experience, the EE25 is good down to about -30C to -40C (there are two versions, oem and ruggedized). For -50C, I think not even an automotive grade drive will work. SSD is the way to go.

sergatiuk · 08-20-2009, 06:03 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by nobb

Wool sounds like a fire hazard. When it's -50C outside, no matter how much wool you have, after your car has been sitting for a while everything will still be at -50C. From my experience...

natural wool is NOT flamable... as a matter of fact, if there is no actual fire, wool CANNOT burn.
also wool does not heat, it doesnt make the temperature of the PC warmer or cooler, it preserves the temperature of the object it contains ... and therefore in the summer when its +40C, how amazingly inside the wool its gonna be cooler ... just like the cashmere goat that lives in the himalayas ... -50C at night and +50C during the day ... or the sheep in the desert (;
just make sure u have all your regular fans in place (CPU)

nobb · 08-20-2009, 08:50 PM

Yea but still, putting an insulator around the hard drive is not a solution. You can't compare a goat to a hard drive, lol. The goat produces heat and it's coat keeps the heat in. When your hard drive is powered down, it is not generating heat, so it will eventually cool down to ambient. After a long time sitting in the cold, the hard drive itself will STILL cool down to -50C no matter how good of an insulator you put around it (unless it's a vacuum). Basic thermodynamics...

sergatiuk · 08-20-2009, 09:26 PM

the idea is not to isolate the HDD, but the whole case...if u use a wooden case and then wrap the wooden case in wool, ull be amazed at what wool can do ...
as an experiment, take 2 bottles of water, freeze them in the freezer. then take them out and wrap one of them with thick natural wool, keep them both in room temperature, and see how much longer the one in the wool will stay frozen.
what im trying to say is, after the first time u run your pc in wool it will preserve its temperature after the use, the next morning it will still be warm enough to start right away...
2 years ago i was a sales person in a wool company, and i did alot of research about the topic... IT WILL WORK !

Machinehead · 08-21-2009, 11:54 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by sergatiuk

and therefore in the summer when its +40C, how amazingly inside the wool its gonna be cooler ...

Logically this doesn't make sense. While I agree that wool will retain the thermal temperature of a hard drive which would be pretty useful in cold weather, in the summer the insulation will cause overheating since the the device it self is a heat generator. Not to mention will make it more difficult to cool the hard drive down.

sergatiuk · 08-23-2009, 12:10 AM

again, you are missing my point... the idea is not to isolate the HDD but the whole PC case, this way the fans regulate the temperature inside the case...

Maheriano · 08-23-2009, 02:02 AM

I don't think so man, if you've got fans in the case pushing around hot air, they're not going to be able to cool down the system in the summer time unless they're getting cooler air from outside the case. The wool will inhibit this.

nobb · 08-23-2009, 06:37 PM

Well if you have fans circulating ambient air from the outside that is at a lower temperature than inside the case, then perhaps it wont overheat in the summer.

But the whole point of this is to prevent the hard drive from freezing in the winter. It might work if you are only leaving the computer for a few hours at a time, but overnight in -50C? It wont work, regardless of if you are wrapping the whole computer or just the hard drive. You can leave boiling water inside a thermos out in -50C overnight and the next morning it will still be frozen. Not worth the trouble since you can just get a cheap SSD for $100.

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