Power Consumption and Temperature Considerations in Disk Drives

This work studies the contributions of various drive components to the overall drive temperature and temperature gradients within a drive. Data is presented from a variety of 3.5 inch disk drives under varying operating conditions. The average drive case temperature is a result of individual contributors like electronics components on the PCB, spindle motor and actuator. Each of these components dissipate power depending on their main function, the drive operation and in some cases depending on the current drive temperature. Due to the large variety of drive designs this work concentrates on the characteristics of different components in terms of individual temperatures and time constants rather than detailed analysis of one specific disk drive.