Cooling Study of a High Packing Density Disk Array for Next Generation Disk Array Systems (1st Report: Thermal Measurement of Actual Hard Disks Arranged in Rows)

Abstract

Cooling is a primal issue for future disk array systems using 2.5-inch hard disks because of high packing density of the disks. Accordingly, measurement of thermal characteristics of the hard disks arrayed in rows along a flow direction is conducted. Temperature distribution in the main body of the hard disks is almost uniform. And, the circuit board temperature of the hard disks is higher than the main body temperature by nearly 20 °C to 30 °C. The temperature rise of the hard disks relates with air velocity to the power of -0.8, thus the flow near the hard disks is considered as fully turbulent. And, the temperature rise is almost proportional to the heat generation in the hard disks. The temperature rise is less than 15 °C at air velocity of over 2.3 m⁄s.