hard drive fan - always necessary?

[orestes]

I just got a Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 80GB with a Bafo USB2 enclosure, but the fan is way too loud. It had me wondering if the fan is really necessary because all I do with it is stream MP3 files. I can even leave the cover off if it's necessary...will the drive eventually get too hot or will the fan need to be on all the time?

 

[FishTankX]

Since it's an enclosure the fan nwill be necescescary to preserve proper venthiliation.

If you can take off the cover, it should do okay.

My personal reccomendation would be to stop the internal fan, then stick a panaflow L1A ontop of it. Should keep it nice and cool.

 

[HappyCracker]

I'm sure it's just a regular drive in a case. You could leave the cover off, yes, it should work just fine. Where do you have this drive? I like to keep some space open around my drives just to let some air move because I have an old 10 GB Fujitsu that has some chips on it that get reeeeaall hot, so I let that be my metric for how warm these things can be

 

[Zepper]

Perhaps you could replace the noisy fan with a quieter one.
.bh.