I saw this company cooling disks with fans when they're cloning them, like this:



How useful do you think this is? I was a bit under the impression that disks are generally meant to run at room temp. but maybe cooling the PCBs helps?

It helps. And not with the intent of cooling the PCB.
Don't necessarily need a fancy fan like that one.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

I have a disk that works correctly only when operating +56'C.

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On a clear disk you can seek forever.

i just use cheap 80mm case fans standing next to the drive to keep the airflow moving across them. works well