Barracuda 36 Installation Guide, Rev. B | 29 |
Providing adequate cooling
The enclosure design must ensure adequate cooling for the drive. The maximum ambient air temperature around the drive should not exceed 50° C. However, to achieve maximum reliabil- ity, the ambient temperature should be about 15° C below this value most of the time.
The drive’s product manual (77767528) describes how to evalu- ate the air-flow design. The evaluation consists of ensuring that the case temperature of certain critical components remains within acceptable limits during drive operation.
We recommend orienting the drive or directing the air flow in a way that creates the least amount of air-flow resistance while providing air flow above the circuit boards and around the head and disc assembly (HDA). Also, choose the shortest possible path between the air inlet and exit. This minimizes the distance traveled by air that is heated by the drive and by other nearby heat sources.
Figure 4 shows two design approaches with one or more fans used to generate air flow. The air-flow patterns can be created by the fans either pushing or drawing air. The overall flow pattern can be directed from front to back, back to front, or side to side.