# Freezing Cold Hard Drive - how long to wait?



## cadet502 (Jun 17, 2005)

I've been waiting almost two weeks for my new Calvary 1TB hard drives to arrive. They showed up on the doorstep today, and it's gone from about 15F to 31F right now. I've removed them from their packaging, and dang they're cold. Not alot of vent holes in the cases. I'm dying to hook them up, how long should I wait before applying power? 

I'm thinking 2-3 hours, not sure if I can stand it.


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

Hopefully you're up by now 

Probably 30 minutes is sufficient, but if you're waiting 2 hours I'd say you're good to go .. it's been 1 hour now .. is the HDD still really cold?


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## dms1 (Oct 26, 2007)

The drive is almost certainly speced to work down to zero Celsius and I would be very surprised if the temperature in the packaging fell that low, so I wouldn't have thought you needed to wait at all.

Of course, this advice is rather moot now!


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## funhouse69 (Mar 26, 2007)

dms1 said:


> The drive is almost certainly speced to work down to zero Celsius and I would be very surprised if the temperature in the packaging fell that low, so I wouldn't have thought you needed to wait at all.
> 
> Of course, this advice is rather moot now!


Its not the problem of the operating temperature it is the problem of going from freezing cold to warm which is just inviting condensation which would be BAD! This is why they tell you to wait.

Put a DVD in your freezing car over night then put it in a nice warm DVD player and see what happens. 

Ok I just noticed that you are in TX so probably something you couldn't do... Wait put it in your freezer instead.


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## HighVoltage (Nov 27, 2007)

funhouse69 said:


> Its not the problem of the operating temperature it is the problem of going from freezing cold to warm which is just inviting condensation which would be BAD! This is why they tell you to wait.
> 
> Put a DVD in your freezing car over night then put it in a nice warm DVD player and see what happens.
> 
> Ok I just noticed that you are in TX so probably something you couldn't do... Wait put it in your freezer instead.


Err, Maybe you are using old westerns as a reference for Tx weather... :grin:

Its 38F in Austin and 34F in Dallas. It gets a little cold here too.

The solid-state commercial components are rated down to 0C (32F) but DVDs, HDDs, etc are not exclusively solid-state devices.

My fiance's car refuses to play her CDs, spits them out, until she gets the heater running. :lol:


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