...It's about a used hdd that recently came into my hands. It's working fine -also checked it with various utilities like HDTune and HDD Regenerator, although I noticed that monitoring programs, show a temp of...75C. Now as far as I know, more than 50 is a reason to start taking precautions (give it cold showers after backing up data ASAP etc etc), and it actually sounds ridiculous to me. I mean, SEVENTY-FIVE?! It should have been melting all over the case already.
However it more like seems to be a faulty reading of some kind, 'cause I already put some extra fans blowing directly on it, which didn't do anything. Then, with an open case, I put a regular household cooling fan blowing at the inside, which effectively dropped all temps to an average of 30-something (even some "hottie" Maxtors that use to have an average of 50+, dropped to something like 38-39). Excelstore though seems to be reluctant to cool things down : it's STILL showing "75", with any program I used (HDTune, HD Sentinel, SpeedFan, Sandra, etc). Plus when I touch it, I don't get any 3rd degree burns : seems the drive is a lot cooler than the applications manifest. Moreover, that's the temp it shows even if I just start the pc, with all drives having been inoperable for some time. So the "logical" conclusion 'd have to be that some sensor that I guess drives possess, is malfunctioning, and it's stuck to showing that very temprature.
...Or not? Is it possible that the apps are showing the correct temp?
Anything I can do to verify if that's the case, and if not, something to do about that sensor to get it back to working normally?

(like I said, the disk recently came into my hands, so I wouldn't know its temprature history. Plus it's "totally empty", since as soon as I got it, I filled it with zeros and then formatted it - I mean no need for "backing up" advice...)

_________________
PCs are so much like women:costly,addictive,buggy,nerve racking,good at games and prone to breaking up.
Plus a lifetime isn't enough to really know them.

Can you post the SMART attribute data from HDDScan? (HD Tune doesn't show the uppermost 16 bits of the raw value).

Current drives maintain a log of overtemperature events, plus a temperature history over the lifetime of the drive.

You can retrieve this history, and display it graphically, using smartmontools:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/files/
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartm ... i/Download

AIUI, the following command will retrieve the historical temperature data for a supported HD:

smartctl -l scttemp /dev/sda

Other useful options are "-l scttempsts" and "-l scttemphist".

Thanks for taking the time mate.
Yet I either couldn't make good use of that console app (i guess I have to replace the "dev" switch with the actual device,,,but I dunno what that should look like : "dev3" maybe, since it's my "3rd hard disk in the row", installed?) or my disks aren't supported.

Here's however the ss from HDD Scan,
and here's from HD Sentinel (I think you'll find what you wanted, in the latter)

If you can make any heads or tails out of the above, let me know.
Thanks once more.

_________________
PCs are so much like women:costly,addictive,buggy,nerve racking,good at games and prone to breaking up.
Plus a lifetime isn't enough to really know them.

The third drive would be /dev/sdc.

HD manufacturers are not consistent in their SMART implementations, but your SMART data confirm that attribute 194 is a temperature attribute.

Yours is not the first case I've seen where the temperature sensor gives incorrect readings, but its the first one I've seen where the value doesn't change.

BTW, you should keep an eye on the reallocated sector count.

Despite your clarification about how I should input the device (it actually failed in every other letter I used after "dev" - I have 5 hdds connected there, 4 through mainboard's IDE controller, and a SATA one connected on a SATA-to-PCI controller card) I keep not being able to make good use of that smartctl application.
Anyway, yes, I do have in mind the RSC attribute's readings (even though it's just 7 of them for the time being).

Thanks for your time once again.

_________________
PCs are so much like women:costly,addictive,buggy,nerve racking,good at games and prone to breaking up.
Plus a lifetime isn't enough to really know them.