Make no mistake, hard drives run hot. Granted, they’re not a hot as the processor or the RAM, but processors have big fat heat sinks and a fan cooling them down and you can get RAM with heat spreaders.

So what can you do to cool off the hard drive? Attach a fan to it. How much do they cost? They can be as little a 3 bucks or as expensive as 30 bucks.

The Big Question: Does this extend the overall life of the hard drive?

Some say yes and swear by them. Others say it makes no difference.

Most people will use hard drive coolers not to extend hard drive life but rather to keep the overall inside case temperature down. And yes it does help out quite a bit in this respect.

The benefit of using a drive cooler is that it actually helps to extend the life of your entire computer. Everyone knows a cool computer is a happy one.

The drawback is that fans make noise. The more fans are present the more your computer sounds like a washing machine in spin cycle.

If a hard drive cooler sounds right to you, when shopping be sure to pay keen attention to the noise level rating (listed as dBA, the lower the number, the better).