Hard drive mounting -- horizontal vs. vertical -- does it matter which method from a reliability standpoint?

[Imyourzero]

I remember reading somewhere that hard drives that were mounted horizontally (flat) tended to have higher reliability than those mounted in a vertical fashion (on their side). Something about the vertical mount putting more strain on the read head or the motor.. Is there any truth to this? Is it even an issue? I've always tried to buy cases where the hard drives mounted horizontally, but this morning I put together my new 3400+ rig and I've got a problem. I bought a Raptor, so now I've got 3 hard drives but my 6800 GT is so freakin long that it won't allow me to install a drive in the middle slot of the HD tray. I can BARELY squeeze the card in there with a drive in the middle slot, but there's NWIH that I'll be able to connect the power connector to the end of the card.

My temp. solution was just to leave 1 hard drive out for now, but I might just get a different case so that I can have all 3 drives installed. I've found a Lian-Li that I like, and it holds up to 5 hard drives (none of which would conflict with the vid card) but the HD tray is a vertical-mount design so they are lined up side-by-side. If the vertical mounting method is bad for reliability, I'll just shop for another case that has a horizontal mount system that's in a location which doesn't conflict with the vid card.

Thanks!

 

[ScrapSilicon]

and the case is..? <edit> this might help

 

[amdguy]

no

 

[ProviaFan]

I have the Lian Li PC-60; the drive bay in it supports 5 drives mounted vertically, or 3 drives mounted horizontally with an adapter plate thing (and IIRC also one more drive mounted vertically).

Edit: I'm running a Raptor and an older WD 80GB special edition both mounted vertically, and haven't had any problems yet. (*knocks on wood*).

 

[boomerang]

Dell has been mounting Hard Drives vertically for many years.

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: boomerang
Dell has been mounting Hard Drives vertically for many years.

Yeah, I've seen several PC vendors that mount drives that way. You wouldn't think they would do that if it meant more warranty work on the hard drives, but you never know. In some instances it saves a lot of space (my mother's Dell has a Seagate that's mounted vertically to the inside of the FRONT of the case, behind the power button...it takes up next to no room inside).

I guess I'm just paranoid because my old Enlight case was set up for vertical mount and I had one or two drives mysteriously die on me after using them in that case. Then again, they were IBM Deathstars... :roll:

 

[Mik3y]

i heard that mounting it vertically and horizontally is fine, but mounting it diagonally is bad. i'm not totally sure about that, but it seems logical since by mounting it diagonally, the discs will be spinning unbalanced, which may be bad in the long term.

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

Originally posted by: boomerang
Dell has been mounting Hard Drives vertically for many years.

i have a 7 year old dell with a vertically mounted hd still working...it's a wd caviar 3.2GB

i think they are designed to go either way

Originally posted by: Mik3y
i heard that mounting it vertically and horizontally is fine, but mounting it diagonally is bad. i'm not totally sure about that, but it seems logical since by mounting it diagonally, the discs will be spinning unbalanced, which may be bad in the long term.

Originally posted by: boomerang
Dell has been mounting Hard Drives vertically for many years.

i have a 7 year old dell with a vertically mounted hd still working...it's a wd caviar 3.2GB

i think they are designed to go either way

i'm pretty sure if the drive is imbalanced diagonally it will be imbalanced any way

careful though, they are usually mounted horazontally for passive cooling effectiveness. the large surface area on the top compared to side gets hot and conducts a lot of the heat away as it riese to the top of the hard drive. if you don't have a fan blowwing right over them i would leave them horazontal