My vostro 1014 HDD runs too hot

Hi Flash sight,

Although your drive may reach 55°C, the specs refer to ambient temperature, not the temperature of the drive itself, so you're fine. 

Even if that would be the ambient temperature I found the following fragment from seagate, which has the ambient temperature 0-60°C:

Ambient temperature is defined as the temperature of the environment immediately surrounding the drive.
Actual drive case temperature should not exceed 65°C (149°F) within the operating ambient conditions.

I can't see how 50 - 60°C can be good for the HDD in the long run.

Your quote says 65°C, so your temp of 50°C is 15°C lower than recommended. Do you realize that 15°C is equivalent to almost 30°F. That's a fairly safe margin.

If you read what I write I said the text is from seagate, not toshiba. Seagate has 0-60°, toshiba is 5-55º. So if seagate would be only 5° higher max temperature than ambient, then toshiba should be the same, which would be 60°C. Mine is already at 50° and it's mid winter. When reaching 55-60° in the summer, how good would it be for the drive operating at maximum temperature? If I'm lucky maybe the drive might just last over a year, once my warranty expires.

I don't know in what situations you would want to be on just the edge of specifications, at least if you hope for the apparatus to function more than just a few years.

Is there any place where other people owning 1014 or 1015 vostros talk about their laptops, what the temps are, how long did the components lasted, if they had any problems, etc.

There's always Google.