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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.