Hard drive mounting

[Burtie21]

Simple question, is it safe to mount hard drives sideways?

 

[sniperruff]

dell did it for ages on the dimension. well vertically to be exact.

 

[Burtie21]

alright thanks sniperuff, just one last time for anyone else, it doesn't shorten the lifespan at all does it?

 

[WW2Planes1]

again, I'm assuming you mean vertically, as you might in a Lian-Li case.
I currently have 4 SATA drives mounted vertically in a Lian-Li PC-61 case. I will say that I have been experiencing an intermittent problem with one of them (a Seagate 'Cuda 200GB), making a clicking noise and being removed from my system. I'm not sure what the cause of this is, but I haven't ruled out the mounting.

That said, my other three drives, including my Raptor system drive all work fine. Also, I haven't heard of anyone else complaining about problems with hard drive mouting in the Lian-Li cases, so I would say that you probably won't have a problem. I'm guessing my problem is more likely either a bad hard drive or a faulty SATA cable.

 

[Zepper]

Most drive mfrs now claim that it is OK to mount hard drives in ANY orientation EXCEPT more that 5 degrees off of horizontal or vertical (IOW, tilted). I still have a taboo against mounting them upside-down ( PCB up) - if I ever find one upside-down, I FIX IT! This happens most often in older Compaqs (too cheap to add a 25 cent bracket). My main SCSI (IBM 10k) drive is mounted nose down on the side bar of my new Silverstone Berserker case and it seems fine with it - it was mounted "properly" until now... But horizontal with the PCB down is still optimum as it exerts the most equalized forces on the mechanism.

.bh.

Here, have a :beer: !

:moon:

 

[quakefiend420]

i've heard that whatever position you format the drive in is what you should have it in for day to day operation...anyone know if there is any truth to this?

 

[Zepper]

Used to be so before voice-coil servo head location was common (mechanical stepper motors). Servo head location should find the track regardless. Besides only the factory can really change the low-level format on current drives. But sticklers continue to do it anyway - it certainly can't hurt...
. As long as there is adequate free space on the drive, programs like SpinRite GRC can reformat the drive with the data in place. good to back up beforehand anyway.

.bh.

:moon:

 

[Burtie21]

thanks guys!