I have a Seagate GoFlex 2TB external HDD that goes upto 60C when doing intensive copying/moving of data (around 400GB at once). At idle, it runs at 51-52C. If I keep my PC powered on for a day or two the drive gets to 55C at idle. Is this too high for a drive? Also, it is around 1 year old, and I noticed the temps only after installing a monitoring software for some other heat issues that I was having with the system. I've been running the drive for a year, completely oblivious of the temp.
One thing that can really suck about external drives is some never stop spinning when turned on. I bought my wife a 1tb HDD for her music. I noticed just being powered on and not plugged in it was still trying to spin for w/e reason. She left it plugged in and spinning at all times (something I didn't know) and it eventually failed. I got yelled at (a lot).
I'm not sure if all externals do this but from my experience "quite warm" to the touch was the temp it was always at. I doubt there is any software to spin down the external usb drive on low or no utilization since the usb being plugged in or not didn't matter. The one I bought was probably just a piece of crap since I put an old HDD in the external casing.
Although quite informative, that doesn't answer my question. Are my HDD temperatures normal or should I be worried?
It is normal for external hard drives to get that hot. The hard drive on my laptop got up to 70, which is a little warm for my liking. but 60 defgrees is normal for laptop drives, external and high RPM HDD's