Harddrive cooling

I can have 3 harddrives squished into one bay with active cooling (an 80mm, 2500rpm fan), or two in that bay and one just chilling in another bay. Would the benefit of the active cooling outweigh the three sources of heat being that close together? I don't feel like hooking up a temperature probe to find out, so lmk what YOU would do.

[Jason425]

going to be quite the high case temp if you don't have an exhaust for that HD heat. If they are 7200 rpm, stick em with the fan. If any are less, you can leave it in its own w/o a fan.

oh, yeah, well, there is defintely exhaust present. The question is simply which bay in the case should it go. Either way, there will be two 80mm input and 1 120mm output fan (/me wants more output). 1 of the 80 mm is dedicated to case cooling (i.e. at the bottom of the case unobstructed. The other input fan is in a harddrive cage that hold 3hd's. so, do i put all the 3 7200rpm hd's in hte cage, which will be a huge source of heat, or do i put the cooler drive off to itself to allow the other two more cooling?

i wouldnt stuff that many in one bay
there is very little space between the HDD's for air to move around

i would leave as much room as possible
something liek 2 per bay is fine
3 is really pushing it