Hard drive crash - help & advice needed

[maxfrost01]

Okay, so the worst just happened. Hard drive crash and I've lost one of my two 250GB drives.

My local computer guy has suggested that the two 250GB Western Digital drives(7200rpm) he fitted only four months ago may have been generating too much heat! He now suggests re-fitting the original 250GB Maxtor drive (which came with my Dell machine and which he took out four months ago) plus two smaller 150GB drives spinning at 10,000 rpm. He would space these drives out better in the case (removing the CD slot to make more room) and thinks this configuration would run cooler. He also suggests that I use the original Dell drive for all my software and the two new drives for video editing.

I'm editing High Definition Video from my Sony HDR-HC1E camcorder using VS10+ (well, to be accurate, I WAS editing etc.......)

Question 1: do you think it would work?
Question 2: how much disk space does an MPEG2 High Def file take up when imported from a 60 minute tape (computer man asked me this and I didn't know the answer and I can no longer look!)
Question 3: Is my computer guy an idiot?

[sjj1805]

Computer heat dispersal is always a matter of serious concern.
If a fan fails or gets clogged up the processor can overheat and effectively melt resulting in an expensive repair even for persons like myself who can build a computer. Similarly hard drives that get too hot can also fail.

My motherboard contains sensors and the motherboard manufacturer has provided some software for monitoring the temperatures and fan speeds and other critical items. This software will show that when the computer is simply in its "idle" state of only running background stuff that you don't even think about such as the system clock, 'listening' to the keyboard and mouse etc, the processor temperature is somewhere in the 45-50 degrees C area.

Start running a few programs and you get a slight increase in temperature whilst the processor is now working for a living. Start rendering a video and the temperature climbs up to something like 60-65 degrees C.
The room temperature also has an effect on things such as a hot summers day -v- a cold winter night.

Most people have a simple computer system with a single hard drive and a DVD burner. Most of the time the DVD burner is in its standby state and not generating much heat. The hard drive though is a small oven. So now we have the heat from the processor and also the hard drive to disperse.

Some people add a second hard drive - that is a further increase in temperature. Most computers are OK with this without the need for further modification.

I myself have 3 internal Hard Drives and so the heat dispersion is of more concern especially when you consider the heat rise of the processor when dealing with video rendering.

What I have done (bearing in mind I can build computers) is to take a fan out of an old computer power supply and then I have attached it to the inside of the back of the computer case.

A computer Power Supply

This extra fan has made a significant difference to the running temperature of my computer.

Your local computer guy does make sense when he mentions re-arranging the positions of the hard drives/DVD drives in your computer to try and remove some hotspots.

There are several products that you can purchase to assist with cooling down the computer
Here's a Google Search