where are the breather holes on Toshiba laptop HDs?

[California]

I read about a theory on Apple laptops that seems to be coming true. The Toshiba OEM drives used by Apple seem to be put together with the Toshiba label covering the breather holes. I asked a Apple Cert Tech guy I know to check it out and he looked at two dead lappie drives he had -- one had the breather hole punched out or exposed, the other OEM drive had a label covering up the hole. This is despite the fact that Toshiba warns on that same label "DO NOT COVER HOLES"

Anyway, I pulled a dead Toshiba out of a powerbook and it was an oem drive but I don't know where the breather holes even are! Anyone know? This is a build up of heat on the hds and not good for the laptops...

 

[elbirth]

The holes on some are on the sides I think...

but what makes you think the drive is getting too hot? Think of how fast those drives spin- they generate a lot of heat and it's normal.

 

[BlizzardBomb]

The holes on some are on the sides I think...

but what makes you think the drive is getting too hot? Think of how fast those drives spin- they generate a lot of heat and it's normal.

Above 55C is not healthy for a Hard Drive and can lead to premature failure.

 

[Makosuke]

Well, a quick Google image search turned up several images that all looked like this one:

http://www.ixbt.com/storage/toshiba-gax/gax-big.jpg

...which has no visible breather hole on top that I can see. I'm going to take that to mean that it's on the side somewhere, which makes some sense for a laptop drive anyway. Besides, if it were on top, I'd assume the label would have an arrow pointing to the hole not to cover, as most desktop drives do, instead of just saying "Do not cover breathing hole".

I'm not quite sure why you're mentioning heat in relation to the hole being covered, though. Breather holes have absolutely nothing to do with cooling the drive--they're there to maintain pressure equilibrium when the external air pressure changes.

Also, for what it's worth, the internal sensor on the 7200 RPM Seagate drive in my MacBook Pro reports about 40C most of the time, which isn't really even warm, considering that the sensor is probably located within the drive, or at least in contact with the case under the circuit board.

 

[California]

Well, a quick Google image search turned up several images that all looked like this one:

http://www.ixbt.com/storage/toshiba-gax/gax-big.jpg

...which has no visible breather hole on top that I can see. I'm going to take that to mean that it's on the side somewhere, which makes some sense for a laptop drive anyway. Besides, if it were on top, I'd assume the label would have an arrow pointing to the hole not to cover, as most desktop drives do, instead of just saying "Do not cover breathing hole".

I'm not quite sure why you're mentioning heat in relation to the hole being covered, though. Breather holes have absolutely nothing to do with cooling the drive--they're there to maintain pressure equilibrium when the external air pressure changes.

Also, for what it's worth, the internal sensor on the 7200 RPM Seagate drive in my MacBook Pro reports about 40C most of the time, which isn't really even warm, considering that the sensor is probably located within the drive, or at least in contact with the case under the circuit board.

Couldn't open the pix. But thanks. There have been a rash of rumors that this breather hole problem on Toshibas is what is causing all the PB failures with them. So I want to see where the holes are that shouldn't be covered, as i am looking at a dead Toshiba drive out of a PB. Like I said, my ACT friend said he's got two dead OEM toshibas, and one had the hole covered and the other did not.

 

[Makosuke]

Picture attached. Again, I can't see the hole on top anywhere (at least on this particular model) so I'd assume it's on the side (or maybe underside?) somewhere.

I'm a little curious--what PBs are seeing these high failure rates? I thought that the majority of drives Apple ships these days are either Hitachi or Seagate. Are these older PBs?