One thing I did notice is that the disks were rather hot, abnormally imo. The server is hardly stressed, as it's pretty much providing DNS, SMTP, and IMAP for all of one user! :) Motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X.
What I am wondering is, is there some type of power saving mode / setting that I might have missed, a module perhaps? Or do these new fangled disks just run very hot? I've replaced them with two Samsung 160GB PATAs, and they're quite warm after only an hour or so, but admittedly they are doing a RAID sync.
FYI, first generation SATA products will run significantly hotter than current PATA products.
The reason is that when a PATA drive isn't sending data, nothing is going over the bus, so it isn't drawing any power to signal which winds up eventually as heat. However, a SATA drive that doesn't support SATA bus power modes is continuously signaling at 1.5GHz to keep a sort of "carrier" signal running over the SATA cable. This will warm the PHY ASICs on both side of the cable and generate a lot of that extra heat.
The 7200 vs 5400 different for heat is there, but isn't a huge contributor. As SATA drives mature, they'll actually "power down" the cable when not transferring data, which should help them use less power, which translates to less heat.
In the mean time, just be sure to blow some air over them and they should be fine for years. (And I would keep a bit of space between them)
--eric
-- Eric D. Mudama [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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