hard drive mounting orientation

[tdx999]

Hi all,

Will mounting a hard drive in any other orientation other than horizontal be detrimental to the
performance and life of the drive?

Thanks.

 

[thorin]

No. Mounting upside down may present a heat issue for the circuitry of the drive but mounting it on it's side can't hurt it.

Thorin

 

[jmitchell]

I dont personally know, but, every 'uniquely' setup piece of hardware I have seen(drives mounted vertically, hanging down in the case due to lack of drive bays/laziness, etc.) has always seemed to be attached to a system that has much more than it's fair share of unexplainable problems, weird crashes etc...

 

[Mavrick007]

Older drives were meant to be in certain configurations and they had to be dealt with delicately but new drives can be mounted just about however you would like.

<< unexplainable problems, weird crashes >>

are probably due to user error due to unknowledgable people installing the drives in the first place.

 

[LikeLinus]

Dell used to do vertical drives in their Inspiron line all the time. I don't know if they still do, but i never saw any problems with vertical drives. Cases like the Antec still come with Vertical drive mounts (plastic mountings at the front of the case near the fan) just like Dell does. I guess it cant be that bad if huge oem's support them

 

[lozina]

... and cases like my lian-li. i also agree that if there is any orientation that may be detrimental it would be placing it upside down- but horizontal/vertical is a non-issue

 

[mcveigh]

our new dell server has scsi drives mounted vertically on their sides

 

[Scootin159]

<< Dell used to do vertical drives in their Inspiron line all the time. I don't know if they still do, but i never saw any problems with vertical drives. Cases like the Antec still come with Vertical drive mounts (plastic mountings at the front of the case near the fan) just like Dell does. I guess it cant be that bad if huge oem's support them >>



Where is this? In which Antec cases?

 

[mcveigh]

Dell PowerEdge 1500SC, they are in the front in hot swappable cages, you have to remove the case front to get to them however.

 

[CubicZirconia]

My lian li pc 65 has a 5 bay 3.5 rack at the bottom in the front meant to mount drives on their side, which I have done. No problems here.

 

[WarCon]

This may just be an urban legend, but I had heard that whatever drive orientation its in it should stay in. Was explained that changing the orientation after its ran awhile would cause the bearing to have additional wear which would make the drive fail sooner than normal.

Like I said, this is not fact, just hand me down info. Probably doesn't even matter with newer type drives anyway.

 

[dcdomain]

The only rule I've heard is that once you mount a drive a certain way, and run it for a while in that position, it might not be a good idea to switch the orientation of the drive...