disks are hot hot hot

[Antony Gelberg <antony@antgel.co.uk>]

Hi all,

I've recently built my first ever server with a pre-compiled kernel (2.6.4
from backports.org).  I had two 160GB SATA disks which both failed after only
a couple of months.  I found this extremely strange, unless they were
from a bad batch (not likely in this day and age).  They've gone back to
my supplier as faulty anyway.

One thing I did notice is that the disks were rather hot, abnormally imo.
The server is hardly stressed, as it's pretty much providing DNS, SMTP,
and IMAP for all of one user!  :)  Motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X.

What I am wondering is, is there some type of power saving mode /
setting that I might have missed, a module perhaps?  Or do these new
fangled disks just run very hot?  I've replaced them with two Samsung
160GB PATAs, and they're quite warm after only an hour or so, but
admittedly they are doing a RAID sync.

A