Bogus Drive Temperature Reading

[sechs]

I'm suddently getting an obviously incorrect temperature reading from one of my SCSI drives. It was giving appropriate information a few days ago and, otherwise, seems to be working perfectly fine. No other drives are exhibiting any issues with reading temperature.

How might I test to figure out from where the error is coming?

 

[RWIndiana]

I know next to nothing about this sort of thing, but where is the reading coming from? I assume it is not an external thermometer. And, what is the reading? Is it very high or low?

 

[Clocker]

Does it fluctuate or is it just a constant bogus value?

 

[sechs]

This is the SMART reading from the internal sensor.

It fluctuates, although not to a similar amount to the drives near it.

 

[RWIndiana]

If it fluctuates, that may eliminate the possibility of a short or fusion in the temperature sensor. Though maybe not entirely. Has the drive endured any sort of shock? I'm not sure if that would make any difference or not. If it's a very high reading, I would guess that something is shorted out (at least partially) in the temperature sensor.

 

[sechs]

The drive is reading ~18C, while drives around it are ~32 to 35C.

I have recently swapped its position inside my case, but it was working fine there for about a day.

 

[sechs]

Any more ideas? If this is something that I can fix, I'd rather not RMA an otherwise perfectly good drive....

 

[blakerwry]

The temp sensor works of a thermistor, a reistor which properties change with temperature. Depending on the type of thermistor used the resistance may be positively or negatively correlated to temperature. If the thermistor is of the negative type then it may make sense that resistance has increased. An increase in resistance could be attributed to a dirty or faulty connection.

Does this drive have ribbon style connections? if so, have you checked them or re-seated them?



just a guess...

 

[sechs]

"Ribbon style connections?" Where?

 

[blakerwry]

I beleive my 75GXP has a reatachable ribbon style connector that connects the motor to the PCB... the maxtors I've purchased have several thin wiries encased in an epoxy, the 180gxp I has has a ribbon stle cable that has been soldered to the drive housing(not sure how it connects to the PCB)... perhaps you'll have to remove the PCB to be sure, but some drives have them and some don't.

 

[sechs]

This is a 10k.6. The leads into the drive are covered by a cap.

In any case, removing the PCB would void the warranty.

 

[sechs]

After furthur observation, it appears that the drive is reading at about half of what I'd expect. Actually, plus or minus a degree, it's almost always exactly half of the drive mounted closest to it.

Does this point to any particular cause?

 

[RWIndiana]

Demon posession comes to mind. lol
I don't have a clue how the temperature sensors in hard drives are set up, so any guess I would make would be completely uninformed. I know a little bit about weather stations, and if that would happen on my weather station, I would blame it on moisture, corrosion, or maybe even spider webs. Obviously these wouldn't really apply to a hard drive. Perhaps a wire became disconnected or grounded out. Sure wish I knew.

 

[sechs]

Well, I've pretty much decided that it's the drive. I used it's connector for another drive today -- and no temperature abnormalities.

I'd guess that this is some kind of electronics foo foo, but I'll be darned if I can figure out what happened.