Skippy......cooling advice please.

[ausrock]

In their wisdom, Fostex didn't fit a cooling fan or use a h/drive caddy with a built in fan on the early "D" series recorders.

I have just purchased a second h/drive for my D160, but have been advised that the 7200rpm drives definitely should have cooling which creates problems. As I see it I have two options.......;

1; Buy a spare Fostex h/drive drawer ($99 Aust.....~$55 US), and modify it by fitting a fan.

2; Buy a generic caddy assy ($25 Aust for single fan or $39 for a 3 fan unit) and fit it in place of the Fostex assy. Actually I would have to buy two as spare drawers aren't readily available.

The problem is that there is no suitable power supply in the D160 and short of somehow fitting a 12v supply somewhere I am at a loss.

Any suggestions?

 

[skippy]

How about Option 3: buy a 5400 rpm drive? (;-)

Sounds like you've already laid out the cash for the 7200 rpm drive. If the 12V supply in the Fostex won't spin a fan also, I'm worried about its ability to power that drive...

You should be able to install a low-power 60mm fan (like one of the magnetic-levitation types that are very low noise), and run it with a few diodes in series to drop the fan voltage down to 7v or so. If you set it up to exhaust out the top, and put it over the carrier the way it was done on the later D's, that's probably the most efficient and least noisy approach. The thing does have a 12V supply for the disk, and you'll only need a few mA to spin that fan at low speed: it should be doable. Just a little sheetmetal and wire harness hackery.

I'd drop back to 5400 rpm drives ASAP, though. Here in the states they are practically free- I get mine from diskdepot.com, as refurbished units. 60 Gb is $59 US, and I've never had a failure- they buy direct from Seagate's refurb channel. They ship, as well, although I don't know about getting things to Oz... Maybe you could snag some from them?

 

[ausrock]

Skippy,

Thanks for the advice. Since I read your reply this morning, things have started to sort themselves out........(it is now 8.30 pm Thurs.)

I have purchased a generic caddy with an inbuilt extraction fan next to the input socket as well as getting hold of a "low profile" H/drive cooling fan which normally would fit over the H/drives' pcb. I realised this morning that I can do this without the necessity of modifying the wiring..............just some sheet metal work and it should all be fine...............if it is too noisy running two fans then I will address that later on.

Also, the Fostex distributors here emailed Fostex Japan about this problem earlier today and I already have a copy of their reply which unfortunately doesn't tell me anything new, but at least they were prompt.

I'll let you know how it all pans out.

Regards,

ChrisO