[benjaminmarle]

Anyone have one ever fail due to heat? Seems like when my unit gets to 129-130 it reboots by itself. Got the new unit D* sent me yesterday and I bought a cooling pad to bring the temp down before I install the new unit. But I was curious, if the heat gets too high, does it shut itself down?

 

[lwilli201]

Yes, they will reset if they get to hot. Make sure your units have plenty of airspace around them. The cooling fan is a good idea. I even prop up my units about 1/2 inch so air can get under them.

 

[Iaen23]

Just a kitchen cooling rack under the HR20 dropped the temp 6 degrees. Now with laptop cooler, it's 106 most of the time. Dropped to 96 with doors open.

 

[benjaminmarle]

Yes, they will reset if they get to hot. Make sure your units have plenty of airspace around them. The cooling fan is a good idea. I even prop up my units about 1/2 inch so air can get under them.

I used to put water bottle caps unter my UTV to keep it cool:lol: .

 

[mikefeuer]

Thanks for this thread. Interesting subject. Makes me wonder how many issues might be heat related. I've not had an 'auto-reboot', and everytime I've peeked at the temperature it was always 122-124 it seems. I tried putting typical medicine cups (about 1-1/2 inches high) underneath and the temperature actually rose to 127. I replaced them with water bottle calps and the temperature dropped to 118. Just checking again it's back to 124, so I'm not sure what I've learned or what was accomplished. FWIW, the unit is in the open on a glass shelf on a Samsung stand. What is a "normal" temperature range? I might like to try a laptop cooler. I assume interference is not an issue and they're quiet ?
Thanks

 

[brittonx]

It is also important to note that heat can drastically reduce the lifespan of hard drives.

The following is an excerpt from: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,78048-page,1/article.html
=================================
"Michael Beary, General Manager of ESS Data Recovery in Carbondale, Illinois, explains it simply: "Heat causes the metal oxide coating on the hard drive platters to expand. This affects track alignment and weakens the magnetic strength of each bit over time, eventually leading to hard disk failure." In fact, Beary says, heat is the number one cause of hard drive failure. And it doesn't take a catastrophic house fire to toast a PC's hard drive or other component--even a heavy session of multitasking could do it. "As hard drive technology packs more and more bits into each square inch of platter space," Beary says, "hard disks become more and more sensitive to heat. Since most PCs don't come with hard drive cooling units, the best way to preserve the life of your hard drive is to install a fan."
=================================

In a DVR, the hard drive is constantly transferring data with the drive.

 

[benjaminmarle]

Laptop cooler brought it down to 113 which is 45 deg C so it's 15 deg warmer than the HR10 Tivo I have. Not too bad. It is in an enclosure with a glass door and no back to the enclosure. Feel much better now and have had no problems with the new unit so far. The old unit would get to 129 before.

 

[DblD_Indy]

Laptop cooler brought it down to 113 which is 45 deg C so it's 15 deg warmer than the HR10 Tivo I have. Not too bad. It is in an enclosure with a glass door and no back to the enclosure. Feel much better now and have had no problems with the new unit so far. The old unit would get to 129 before.

So do you power the laptop cooler off the usb?

My cat likes to sleep on my HR-20 it works great as a cat warmer.. Much better than a DVR.... HA!

 

[benjaminmarle]

Yes I power it with the USB. I could't see why I would pay about $20 more for the same laptop cooler (Targus) to use another electrical cord and have four extra USB that are not usable in my rack system. Anyway works great and it is quiet.

 

[btmoore]

You better not cool it down too much that heat might be necessary to keep the bits moving smoothly, if it gets too cold you might start getting sticky bits and the next thing you know all those memory leaks are going to flood the network address pool and then what a mess you are going to have cleaning that up since it looks like there is something wrong with the garbage collection in the HR20.