Do HD drives die faster if you stand them vertical?

[mitchel]

Just curious. Initially at first I thought they do since the motors have to work harder but then I realize that the disks are balanced and so the motor wouldn't necessarily have to work harder to keep the disk spinning.

What do you think?

 

[Elstupido]

Most external hard drives are mounted in the vertical position if that tells you anything. And the drives inside the enclosure are basically the same as internal drives, so the answer is no.

 

[taltamir]

well... most external enclosures also have poor ventilation resulting in higher temperatures, and it is known that higher temperatures cause damage...

So the answer is "probably not, or if so, then not significantly so"

 

[MiataPaul]

I know the machines at work, crappy old Dell pc's HDD die very quickly when mounted on there sides. But that may have to be with being crappy old 900 Mhz PIIIs!

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: MiataPaul
I know the machines at work, crappy old Dell pc's HDD die very quickly when mounted on there sides.

Heh, reminds me of the Dell computers at my Summer internship. They were Optiplex models with Prescott core CPUs in a small form factor (slimline) micro BTX style case. The PSU was mounted right BEHIND the CPU heatsink. Brilliant! The Prescott CPU basically helped heat up and kill many drives in those cases. I've taken the cover off the one on my desk to find out what was making such a grinding/humming noise, to find out it was coming from the HDD. It was too hot to touch!

 

[Nathelion]

In my experience, mounting hard drives in any orientation other than horizontally does kill them off faster. In particular, there are a couple of HPs with vertical hard drives in the office where I work part time. Those computers have all had 1-2 drive replacements in the time I've been there, none of the other machines have had any HDD issues. Granted, it could be because of some other quirk with those systems since they're all the same model, but I don't think so since I know for a fact that the drives don't run excessively hot.

 

[Continuity28]

Honestly, I doubt the orientation has any difference on life expectancy.

When bringing up pre-built systems, keep in mind the quality of parts and case design might be the real problem, which is what I believe Zap was referring to.

However, I have had issues where after a drive had been operating for a long time in one orientation, moving it the other way might make it inaccessible until restored in the original orientation. Or maybe I just had bad/old drives?

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: Continuity28
Honestly, I doubt the orientation has any difference on life expectancy.

When bringing up pre-built systems, keep in mind the quality of parts and case design might be the real problem, which is what I believe Zap was referring to.

However, I have had issues where after a drive had been operating for a long time in one orientation, moving it the other way might make it inaccessible until restored in the original orientation. Or maybe I just had bad/old drives?

The actuator for the arm probably self calibrates to adjust for different orientations. Probably the drives that wouldn't work when you changed the orientation weren't calibrating properly. So when the drive thinks the head is in one location, it physically is offset by a minute amount.

According to Seagate, mounting either horizontally or vertically is ideal. They test their drives in both configurations.