Hard Drive in cold temperatures.

[Buzby]

We have an out building close to our shop which we use for storage etc.

We have fitted an old network drive in the building using ethernet over mains plugs and all seems to be working fine.

We are only using this as yet another level of backing up on top of other things that we do daily.

My question is will this network drive survive in this outbuilding in the cold weather? the lowest temperature that we saw this winter was -7 and even then I am sure the temperature would have been higher inside the out building.

The reason for the outbuilding is no visitors or staff have access making it even more secure, and also it is off site incase of fire, theft, flooding etc.

[Southwest Test]

Hi Jason,

I found your post interesting. I asked myself exactly the same question some years ago, when I decided to install a small server in a static caravan with no heating. Despite my misgivings the equipment functioned perfectly throughout several winters.

I think it might be verging on foolhardy to actually recommend such an arrangement (my biggest fear was condensation) - however, the proof is in the pudding as they say, and in my case it worked amazingly well... two of those winters were exceptionally severe, as we all remember!

I wouldn't like to rely on such a setup as my main backup, but as an additional layer of redundancy I would do it again without hesitation. Like yourself I like the idea of an off-site backup.

[completerookie]

loooking on wikipedia

A common misconception is that a colder hard drive will last longer than a hotter hard drive. A study by Google showed the reverse to be true. Hard drives with average temperatures below 27 °C had a failure rate worse than hard drives with the highest reported average temperature of 50 °C, and a failure rate at least twice as high as the optimum temperature range of 37 °C to 46 °C.

theres a pretty graph showing failiure rates against temperature, and the colder, the higher the failures and the number of failures at colder temps is remarkably high in comparrison.

personally, I try to keep a constant temperature and "bring your hard disk in form the cold" to use a 007 phrase., it seems that temperature fluctuations gives us most problems.

also like southwest-test says, "watch the condensation", thats more likely to give you more problems

kev

[Buzby]

Many thanks for your replies, and som interesting points about condensation, and failure in cold temperatures.

I can't do anything about the cold, but already concerned about condensation the hard drive is almost drowning in the moisture resistant gel bags.

As this is only an old redundant drive, and in addition to other methods I will use it as an experiment and see if I have any issues.

Many thanks for your thoughts.

Jason

[guccij]

Could someone correct the spelling in this thread to help others who may be searching for the word temperature pls?

[Duncan Rounding]

Spelling corrected.
Thanks Jules.

[chris ashdown]

I would have thought that if you made a box about 1 ft square with a loose lid made from 1 inch insulated board from B&Q it would solve the variences in temp and keep moisture out